IBRARY     ) 

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GEORGE   MEREDITH 


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GEORGE    MEREDITH 

NOVELIST     POET 
REFORMER 

BY 

M.   STURGE   HENDERSON 


WITH   A    FRONTISPIECE 


NEW    YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1907 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I.  Introduction       .  .  . 

II.  Outline  of  Life  and  Literary  Career. 

III.  The  Shaving  of  Shagpat,  and  Farina    . 

IV.  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel 

V.  Evan  Harrington  and  The  Empty  Purse 

VI.  Modern  Love       .  .  .  . 

VII.  Sandra  Belloni  and  Vittoria 

VIII.  Rhoda  Fleming    .  .  .  . 

IX.  Meredith  as  Reviewer  and  Critic 

X.  The  Adventures  of  Harry  Richmond    . 

XI.    Beauchamp's  Career  and  Meredith's  Politi 
cal  Views 

XII.    An  Essay  on  Comedy,  The  Sage  Enamoured 
and  The  Egoist 

XIII.  The  Tragic  Comedians 

XIV.  The  Poems— "The  Joy  of 
XV.    The  Poems— Nature 

XVI.    The  Poems— Man 
XVII.    The  Poems— Meredith  as 

man 
XVIII.    Diana  of  the  Crossways 
XIX.    One  of  our  Conquerors 

AND   HIS   AMINTA 

XX.  The  Amazing  Marriage 

XXI.  The  Short  Stories 

XXII.  Minor  Characteristics  and  Conclusion 

Index  ...... 


Earth" 


Artist  and  Crafts 


and  Lord  Ormont 


PAGE 
I 

9 
17 

33 

48 
60 

75 

94 

101 

114 

121 

147 
172 
182 
196 
212 

230 
259 

270 
285 
301 

309 
3i9 


PREFACE 


CHAPTERS  XIV  to  XVII  of  this  book,  in  which 
Meredith's  Poetry  is  considered,  are  the  work  of 
my  friend  Mr.  Basil  de  Selincourt. 


To  Miss  Anne  Douglas  Sedgwick  I  am  deeply  grate- 
ful for  the  encouragement  she  has  given  me,  and  for 
the  material  underlying  one  of  my  chapters.  My 
brother,  Mr.  Charles  Sturge,  has  kindly  provided  me 
with  an  index.  My  thanks  are  due  to  Colonel  Maxse 
for  information  regarding  Beauchamfs  Career,  and  to 
Miss  G.  Osier,  Mrs.  B.  de  Selincourt,  and  the  Reverend 
James  McKechnie  for  assistance  in  various  ways.  Last, 
as  first,  must  stand  my  indebtedness  to  Mr.  Meredith, 
of  which  this  book,  inadequate  as  it  is,  is  the  only 
possible  acknowledgment. 

The  frontispiece  is  from  a  photograph  by  Mr.  F. 
Hollyer. 


GEORGE   MEREDITH 

NOVELIST  POET  REFORMER 


CHAPTER   I 

INTRODUCTION 

"  T  ~\  THEN  at  the  conclusion  of  your  article  on  my 
V  V  works  you  say  that  a  certain  change  in  public 
taste,  should  it  come  about,  will  be  to  some  extent  due 
to  me,  you  hand  me  the  flowering  wreath  I  covet.  For 
I  think  that  all  right  use  of  life  and  the  one  secret  of 
life,  is  to  pave  ways  for  the  firmer  footing  of  those  who 
succeed  us ;  and  as  to  my  works  I  know  them  faulty, 
think  them  of  worth  only  where  they  point  and  aid  to 
that  end.  Close  knowledge  of  our  fellows,  discernment 
of  the  laws  of  existence,  these  lead  to  great  civilisation. 
I  have  supposed  that  the  novel  exposing  and  illustrat- 
ing the  history  of  man  may  help  us  to  such  sustaining 
roadside  gifts."  These  words,  from  a  private  letter  of 
George  Meredith's  to  the  author  of  an  article  in  the 
Harvard  Monthly,  contain  the  creed  on  which  the  whole 
of  his  voluminous  writing  has  been  based.  Imagina- 
tively developed  in  the  Introduction  to  Diana  of  the 
Crossways  and  elsewhere,  it  is  his  plea  for  a  kind  of 
fiction  which,  in  prose  and  in  verse,  he  may  almost  be 
said  to  have  brought  into  existence. 

B 


2  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

But  Meredith  is  not  an  author  only  :  he  is  also  a 
critic,  and  a  critic  of  an  unusually  penetrative  kind.   The 
Essay  on  Comedy  is  universally  recognised  as  a  lasting 
contribution  to  literature ;  but  from  his  articles  in  the 
Fortnightly  Review,  for  the  year  1868  alone,  the  truth 
may  be  gleaned  as  to  the  quality  and  range  of  his 
literary  judgment.     He  had  suffered  too  acutely  him- 
self at  the  hands  of  reviewers  to  be  in  any  danger  of 
dismissing  young  writers'  work  on  the  grounds  of  mere 
personal  distaste.     His  criticism  is  singularly  sympa- 
thetic and  appreciative,  but  it  is  more.     It  is  related  to 
the  possibilities  of  his  art  and  its  whole  body  of  achieve- 
ment :    it   abounds   in    illustrations    drawn    from    the 
masters  of  literature.    From  these  writings  it  is  obvious 
that    Meredith    possesses    a   very   delicate    power    of 
literary  discrimination,  and  any  consideration  of  his 
achievement  must  be  based  on  a  recognition  of  this,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  he  has  laid  himself  open  to  the 
charge  of  being  prolix  and  uneclectic  in  his  work.    The 
truth    is   that   his    great    and    multiform    activity   has 
obscured  the  single-mindedness  of  his  impulse,  and  it  is 
this  single-mindedness  which  needs  to  be  recognised 
afresh  by  those  who  would  estimate  his  power.     Inter- 
mittently, Meredith   is  a  great  artist ;    primarily  and 
consistently,   he   is    a    moralist — a   teacher.       He   has 
pondered  on  man  and  his  destiny  till  his  insight  has 
perceived  whole  regions  and  vistas  of  human  possibility 
that  as  yet  are  untenanted,  and  he  has  made  it  the 
object  of  his  existence  to  nerve  his  fellows  to  seize  and 
enter  on  the  fulness  of  their  inheritance.     It  may  ap- 
pear paradoxical  that  pages  which  would  not  have  been 
published  by  lesser  writers,  should  have  found  favour 
with  an  artist  towering  head  and  shoulders  above  any 
but  the  masters,  but  the  explanation  is  simple  enough. 
It  is  to  be  found  in  Meredith's  conviction  that  he  has  a 


INTRODUCTION  3 

message  to  deliver  and  in  his  willingness  to  sacrifice 
all  other  considerations  to  its  delivery.1  "  The  Empty 
Purse"  he  says  in  a  letter  to  the  author,  "is  not  poetry. 
But  I  had  to  convey  certain  ideas  that  could  not  find 
place  in  the  novels." 

Unwavering  sincerity  is  his  passport  to  attention. 
And  we  shall  be  guilty  of  a  fundamental  misconception 
if  we  do  not  recognise  from  the  outset  that,  even  where 
he  seems  most  obscure,  he  is  always  attempting  to 
express  a  clear  idea,  never  decoying  us  into  a  mere 
morass  of  words.  His  writing  may  at  times  come 
close  to  the  ridiculous  by  overcrowding  of  its  content, 
but  it  never  comes  within  sight  of  bombast  or  preten- 
sion because  its  author  has  never  experienced  the 
smallest  desire  to  make  much  out  of  little.  His  poems 
and  novels  are  glossaries  on  his  reading  of  life,  and  for 
Meredith  every  department  of  life  is  teeming  with  im- 
port. His  intense  and  detailed  interest  in  political  and 
international  development  is  elsewhere  dealt  with  ;  here 
it  is  sufficient  to  note  that  his  dramas  move  on  great 
backgrounds.  Life,  and  the  interplay  of  art  upon 
life,  is  his  business,  the  development  of  the  soul  his 

theme. 

How  from  flesh  unto  spirit  man  grows, 
Even  here  on  the  sod  under  sun. 

"  It  is,"  he  has  said,  "the  conscience  residing  in  thought- 
fulness  I  would  appeal  to,"  and  again,  "  Narrative  is 
nothing.  It  is  the  mere  vehicle  of  philosophy.  The 
interest  is  in  the  idea  which  action  serves  to  illustrate." 
Man  thinks  he  has  seen  the  spiritual  and  material 
forces  of  the  world  at  war  with  each  other  ;  sentimental 
romance  and  so-called  realism  have  been  the  fruits  of 
this  vision.  Meredith  sees  spirit  and  matter  unified, 
and,  in  consequence,  it  is  his  avowed  aim  as  a  novelist 

1  My  Theme. 


4  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

to  eschew  the  "  rose-pink  "  of  sentiment  and  the  "  alter- 
native dirty-drab"  of  the  realist.  These  two  tendencies, 
running  off  now  at  right  angles,  "  fortified  by  philoso- 
phy," he  says,  will  unite  in  an  art  that  is  worthy  the 
name — "  honourable  fiction,  a  fount  of  life,  an  aid  to 
life,  quick  with  our  blood  " — a  representation  of  man's 
nature  as  it  is,  "  real  flesh,  a  soul  born  active,  wind- 
beaten,  but  ascending."  This  then  is  Meredith's  ideal. 
But  it  is  an  ideal  he  shares  with  others.  His  desire  to 
state  facts  as  they  are,  and  thereby  further  man's  pro- 
gress, is  not  unique.  Its  uniqueness  is  in  the  strength 
that  is  at  work  behind  it.  The  distinction  between  one 
idealist  and  another  lies  in  the  degree  of  active  and 
creative  force  with  which  each  is  able  to  identify  his 
aspirations.  Meredith's  qualifications  for  his  under- 
taking— what  he  has  perceived  and  what  he  has  ex- 
pressed— we  shall  hope  to  analyse  as  this  book  proceeds, 
and  there  can  be  no  object  in  forestalling  what  is  to 
come.  It  is  only  necessary  here  to  call  attention  to  his 
clear  and  reiterated  statements  of  general  purpose,  and 
to  recognise  a  few  of  the  more  obvious  difficulties  his 
method  presents. 

The  most  distinctive  peculiarity  of  his  style  is  his 
constant,  and,  as  it  were,  everyday  employment  of 
metaphor.  Where  other  writers  nail  a  train  of  thought 
or  a  series  of  statements  in  mind  with  a  single  compari- 
son, Meredith  indicates  a  dozen  images  which,  taken  in 
flying  succession,  combine,  not  merely  to  express  his 
conclusion,  but  to  reproduce  the  passage  of  his  thought. 
Occasionally,  image  may  be  piled  upon  image  fantas- 
tically, but  this  is  very  seldom  the  case.  Usually  his 
manner  is  recognisably  spontaneous  and  a  direct  out- 
come of  his  matter.  His  imagination  plays  over  every 
object  he  handles,  but  the  point  to  be  specially  noted  is 
that  it  is  even  more  vivid  in  presenting  generalisations 


INTRODUCTION  5 

than  instances,  more  scintillating  in  abstract  regions 
than  in  concrete.  His  torches  of  metaphor  are  used  to 
light  the  obscurity  of  unaccustomed  paths.  He  is  a 
psychologist,  though  embodying  his  psychology  in 
poetic  and  not  in  scientific  form ;  a  poet's  mind  is 
penetrating  caverns  and  recesses  of  thought,  and  the 
pathway  behind  it  is  aflame.  To  take  an  example  :  in 
the  fourth  division  of  Modern  Love  he  turns  abruptly 
from  narration  to  philosophic  analysis  and  disquisition. 
He  enumerates  truths  that  would  be  valuable  and 
striking  even  if  stated  abstractly ;  but  they  are  not  so 
stated.  Imagery  is,  if  anything,  more  abundant  than  in 
the  earlier  portions  of  the  poem ;  every  line  is  meta- 
phorical ;  every  generalisation  is  pictorialised.  And  the 
result,  for  a  reader  capable  of  following  the  story,  is  a 
marvellous  simplification  of  subtle  and  complicated  ideas. 
Not  only  the  experience  of  the  husband  in  Modern  Love, 
but  his  own,  and  that  of  all  men  whose  theories  are  at 
war  with  their  passions,  appears  clarified — converted 
from  something  vaguely  apprehended  to  concrete  and 
tangible  truth.  The  philosopher's  gold  has  been  put 
into  circulation  ;  Meredith  has  coined  it,  and  presented 
it  to  his  fellows ;  freed  it  from  its  overlaying  of  techni- 
calities and  given  it  a  recognisable  aspect.  More  than 
this  is  impracticable  ;  it  is  not  coin  of  the  market-place, 
and  only  those  among  his  readers  are  likely  to  discern 
its  validity  whom  intellect  has  enabled  or  circumstances 
compelled  to  dive  beneath  the  surface  of  things,  and  to 
realise  departments  of  existence  in  which  the  accepted 
currency  has  no  purchasing  power. 

But,  apart  from  the  merely  unintelligent,  two  formid- 
able classes  of  Meredith's  critics  remain.  The  first 
consists  of  those  who  in  no  way  underestimate  the 
pressing  importance  of  the  problems  with  which 
Meredith  sets  himself  to  deal,  but  demand  that  their 


6  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

philosophy  and  fiction  shall  be  served  to  them  in 
separate  dishes.  The  novel,  say  they,  is  nothing  if  not 
a  form  of  art ;  as  such  it  is  quite  unsuited  to  be  a 
channel  of  direct  ethical  teaching.  To  say  this  is,  in 
Meredith's  view,  to  sign  the  death-warrant  of  fiction — 
"to  demand  of  us  truth  to  nature,  excluding  Philosophy, 
is  really  to  bid  a  pumpkin  caper."  A  transcript  oO 
/modern  life,  to  be  in  any  way  credible,  must  exhibit 
Jthe  inner  as  well  as  the  outer.  It  is  an  epoch  when  the" 
minds  of  men  are  busy  ;  probing,  mining,  testing  them- 
selves and  all  they  meet  upon  the  onward  path,  groping, 
individually  and  collectively,  in  search  of  new  ideals 
and  inspirations  on  the  nebulous  border-lands  of  know- 
ledge, apprehending  laws  of  existence  that  have,  as  yet, 
no  formulae.  The  intuitive  discoverers — the  poets — 
ahead  of  all  the  rest,  transcribe  now  and  again  some 
phrase  of  pure  melody  to  be  sung  in  the  ranks  of  their 
fellows,  but  these  isolated  fragments  are  apt  to  be  re- 
garded as  objets  d'art,  adorable  specimens  for  museums, 
rather  than  vital  revelations.  Meanwhile  the  rank  and 
file  are  infected  to-day  with  those  blank  misgivings, 
those  obstinate  questionings,  which  but  yesterday  were 
the  exclusive  possession  of  the  poet;  and  in  conse- 
quence we  have  "problem"  novels  from  the  rear, 
realistic  chroniclings  of  the  mud  left  by  humanity  in 
its  train.  How  bridge  the  gulf  between  these  ruts  of 
mire  and  the  "shining  table-lands"  afar,  except  in  the 
work  of  a  novelist  who  unites  the  poet's  vision  with 
sturdy  sense  of  social  and  political  growth,  who  takes 
humanity  with  "  the  stem,  the  thorns,  the  roots,  and  the 
fat  bedding  of  roses"  that  in  so  doing  he  may  envisage 
and  reveal  her  flower  ? 

The  second  class  consists  of  readers  who,  while  sym- 
pathising with  Meredith's  themes  and  his  attitude 
towards  them,  are  alienated  by  obscurities  of  style  that 


INTRODUCTION  7 

seem  unworthy  and  even  perverse.  Why,  they  ask, 
should  the  writer  of  Modern  Love  and  the  Sonnets  miss 
out  connectives  and  relative  pronouns,  invert  conditional 
clauses,  use  adjectives  as  substantives,  or  substantives 
as  adjectives?  The  answer  consists,  partly,  in  the  fact 
that  Meredith,  failing  in  the  best  years  of  his  life  to  win 
an  adequate  public  for  his  work,  took  to  writing  for 
himself — to  addressing  his  own  intelligence — and,  in 
doing  so,  overestimated  the  alertness  of  other  people's 
minds.  Small  opportunity  was  given  him  for  judging 
what  degree  of  swiftness  average  intelligences  could 
bear,  and,  his  own  mind  being  abnormally  impatient  of 
the  obvious,  it  was  of  this  opportunity  that  he  stood 
peculiarly  in  need.  His  compression  and  omission  of 
inessentials  is  carried  too  far ;  and  his  habit  of  seizing 
the  essence  of  one  metaphor  to  give  a  single  aspect  of 
his  subject,  and  neglecting  it  instantly  to  snatch  a  con- 
tribution from  another,  is  apt  to  rank  the  comparisons 
rather  than  the  object  compared  in  the  forefront  of  his 
reader's  mind.  But  in  the  main,  these  are  the  defects 
of  his  excellences.  Effort  may  be  required  for  tracking 
his  thoughts,  their  exactitude  is  seldom  apparent  super- 
ficially ;  but,  if  we  are  capable  of  understanding  his 
writings  at  all,  of  the  best  of  them  at  least  it  may  be 
said  that  their  vigorous  atmosphere — their  poetic  ex- 
altation and  vitality — are  with  us  from  the  beginning. 
Certain  difficulties  have  to  be  overcome ;  but  these  are 
by  no  means  so  varied  as  they  seem  at  first  sight,  they 
group  themselves  quickly  under  recognisable  headings. 
This  matter  of  obscurity  has  been  in  fact  a  good  deal 
overrated.  In  much  of  Meredith's  work  there  is  no 
obscurity  at  all,  and  the  key  to  the  novels  and  poems 
which  are  obscure  is  supplied  by  his  simpler  writings. 
For  the  reader  who  is  without  that  preconceived  an- 
tagonism to  his  themes  (which  he  encountered  in  his 


S  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

contemporaries)  other  obstacles  will  prove  unenduring. 
And,  in  regard  to  the  few  that  exist,  he  is  his  own 
best  interpreter  ;  "Mrs.  Mountstuart,"  he  says,  "detested 
the  analysis  of  her  sentence.  It  had  an  outline  in 
vagueness  and  was  flung  out  to  be  apprehended,  not 
dissected,"  and  of  Dudley  Sowerby  he  writes:  "The 
internal  state  of  a  gentleman  who  detested  intangible 
metaphor  as  heartily  as  the  vulgarest  of  our  gobble- 
gobbets  hate  it,  metaphor  only  can  describe ;  and 
for  the  reason  that  he  had  in  him  just  something 
more  than  is  within  the  compass  of  the  language  of 
the  meat-markets.  He  had  —  and  had  it  not  the 
less  because  he  fain  would  not  have  had — sufficient 
stuff  to  furnish  forth  a  soul's  epic  encounter  between 
Nature  and  Circumstance  :  and  metaphor,  simile,  analy- 
sis, all  the  fraternity  of  old  lamps  for  lighting  our 
abysmal  darkness,  have  to  be  rubbed,  that  we  may  get 
a  glimpse  of  the  fray." 


CHAPTER    II 

OUTLINE   OF   MEREDITH'S    LIF£   AND 
LITERARY   CAREER 

GEORGE  MEREDITH  is  of  Irish  and  Welsh 
descent.  He  was  born  in  Hampshire  on  February 
1 2th,  1828,  and  was  sent  early  to  a  Moravian  school  at 
Neuwied  in  Germany,  where  he  remained  till  he  was 
fifteen.  On  his  return  to  England  he  began  studying 
law,  but  very  soon  abandoned  it  for  literature.  For 
seven  or  eight  years,  in  the  late  fifties  and  beginning  of 
the  sixties,  he  contributed  regularly  to  the  Ipswich 
Journal  and  wrote  social  and  literary  articles  for  the 
Morning  Post.  He  acted  as  correspondent  for  the 
Morning  Post  during  the  Austro-Italian  war  of  1866, 
and  stayed  for  some  time  in  Venice.  Towards  the  end 
of  the  year  1867  he  undertook  the  charge  of  the 
Fortnightly  Review  while  his  friend  Mr.  John  Morley  was 
absent  in  America.  He  was  for  many  years  reader  and 
literary  adviser  to  Messrs.  Chapman  &  Hall  and,  in 
this  capacity,  is  said  to  have  discovered  The  Story  of 
an  African  Farm  and  its  writer.  He  has  been  twice 
married;  his  second  wife  died  on  September  15th, 
1885,  and  is  buried  close  to  his  present  home  at  Box 
Hill ;  his  first  wife  was  a  daughter  of  Thomas  Love 
Peacock. 

There  seems  little  object,  at  this  distance  of  time,  in 
dwelling  on  the  curious  fact  that  the  papers  on  which 
Meredith  began  his  career  as  a  journalist  were  organs 

9 


io  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

of  the  Conservative  party,  or  on  his  heated  defence  of 
Stonewall  Jackson  and  Jefferson  Davis  at  the  expense 
of  Lincoln  and  Grant.  His  opposition  to  the  Manchester 
School,  and  Cobden  and  Bright  in  particular,  will  be 
considered  elsewhere.  The  really  noteworthy  point  is 
the  very  unusual  degree  of  attention  he  devoted  to  the 
interests  of  women  in  the  editorials  and  notes  it  was 
his  weekly  task  to  provide. 

His  first  volume,  entitled  Poems  by  George  Meredith} 
appeared  in  the  year  185 1.     It  is  now  very  rare,  but 
practically   the  whole  of  its    contents   appear    in   the 
thirty- first    volume    of    Messrs.    Constable's    Library 
Edition  of  his  works  under  the  title  of  Poems  written 
in  Early  Youth?-    The  verses  are  boyish  and  immature, 
and  give  small  promise  of  the  measure  of  achievement 
which   is    to    follow ;    fine   lines   occur    in    The   South- 
West  Wind  in  the   Woodland,  and  the  first  pale  sketch 
for  Love  in  the  Valley  is  present,  but  the  general  level 
of  workmanship  is  amazingly  inferior  to  that  of  the 
volume  containing  Modern  Love  and    The  Ode  to  the 
Spirit  of  Earth  in  Autumn — the  Poems  of  1862.     How 
slight  is  the  hint  in  these  earliest  verses  of  what  was  to 
follow  may  be  gleaned  from  the  fact  that  two  of  their 
reviewers,  W.  M.  Rossetti  in  The  Critic  for  November 
1 3th,  1 85 1 ,  and  Charles  Kingsley  in  Erasers  Magazine  for 
December  of  that  year,  refer  to  their  author  as  peculiarly 
influenced    by   Keats.     Rossetti's    review    is    distinctly 
encouraging,  but  otherwise  it  contains  little  or  nothing 
of  interest ;  Charles  Kingsley's,  on  the  other  hand,  is  in 
every  way  notable  and  even  prophetic.     He  strikes  at 
once  in  his    opening   sentences   to    the   heart   of   the 
matter.     "  Health  and  sweetness,"   he  says,  "  are  two 

1  Dedicated   "To  Thomas  Love  Peacock,   Esq.,   with  the  profound 
admiration  and  affectionate  respect  of  his  son-in-law."     Wey bridge,  May, 

1851. 

2  One  poem  only,  Should  thy  love  die,  has  here  been  omitted. 


OUTLINE   OF   MEREDITH'S    LIFE         n 

qualities  which  run  through  all  these  poems.  They  are 
often  overloaded  —  often  somewhat  clumsy  and  ill- 
expressed — often  wanting  polish  and  finish,  but  they 
are  all  genuine,  all  melodiously  conceived,  if  not 
always  melodiously  executed.  Mr.  Meredith's  Pastorals 
too  are  more  like  real  pastorals  than  those  of  any 
young  poet  whom  we  have  had  for  many  a  year. 

.    .   .   '  See  on  the  river  the  slow-rippled  surface 

Shining ;  the  slow  ripple  broadens  in  circles  ;  the  bright  surface 
smoothens  ; 

Now  it  is  flat  as  the  leaves  of  the  yet  unseen  water-lily. 

There  dart  the  lives  of  a  day,  ever-varying  tactics  fantastic. 

There,  by  the  wet-mirrored  osiers,  the  emerald  wing  of  the  king- 
fisher 

Flashes,  the  fish  in  his  beak  1  there  the  dab-chick  dived,  and  the 
motion 

Lazily  undulates  all  thro'  the  tall  standing  army  of  rushes. 

Joy  thus  to  revel  all  day,  till  the  twilight  turns  us  homeward ! 

Till  all  the  lingering,  deep-blooming  splendour  of  sunset  is  over, 

And  the  one  star  shines  mildly  in  mellowing  hues,  like  a  spirit 

Sent  to  assure  us  that  light  never  dieth,  tho'  day  is  now  buried.' 

Careless  as  hexameters,  but  honest  landscape  painting ; 
and  only  he  who  begins  honestly  ends  greatly."  We 
who  are  accustomed  to  the  astonishing  reality  and 
incisiveness  which  is  the  leading  characteristic  of 
Meredith's  poetry,  find  the  promise  of  it  in  these 
earliest  verses  hard  to  discover.  The  greater  in  con- 
sequence should  be  our  tribute  to  a  critic  who  on  so 
slight  a  body  of  writing,  could  detect  this  vital  sincerity 
of  vision,  "  the  living  seed  of  poetry,  certain  to  grow 
and  develope." 

In  1856  came  the  Shaving  of  Shagpat,  followed  in 
1857  by  Farina,  and  in  1859  by  the  Ordeal  of  Richard 
Feverel.  George  Eliot's  enthusiastic  estimate  of  Shagpat 
is  noted  elsewhere,  and  The  Times,  on  the  appearance 
of  Richard  Feverel,  published  a  review1  with  which  the 
most  ardent  of  Meredith's  admirers  would  find  it  difficult 

1  October  14th,   1859. 


12  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

to  quarrel.     Meredith's  champions  in  laying  stress  on 
his  very  real  grievance  against  his  reviewers  and  the 
public    have    been    apt    to    leave    these    notices    and 
Kingsley's  appreciation  of  genius  in  his  earliest  efforts 
a  little  too  much  out  of  count.     In  reading  the  general 
run  of  contemporary  reviews  of  The  Ordeal  of  Richard 
Feverel  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  its  writer  had 
the  gravest  grounds  for  complaint.     The  Athenceinris 
summary  verdict  is  that  the   book  is  unpleasant,  the 
Saturday   Review  —  more   long-winded    but    not   more 
encouraging — laments  that  Mr.  Meredith  has  "  written 
a  didactic  novel  to  teach  us  so  little"  and,  "by  trifling 
with  a  moral  question,  produced  entirely  a  man's  book," 
concluding  with  the  judgment  "  its  author  is  still  in  the 
imitative  stage,  and  sits  at  the  feet  of  Charles  Reade." 
But    against    these    must    be   set   the   extraordinarily 
lengthy  and  painstaking  review  in  The  Times.     Nearly 
fifty  years  have  elapsed  since  the  notice  was  written, 
but  the  general  conclusions  reached  by  the  reviewer  are 
those  of  the  fair-minded  critic  of  to-day.     "  Mr.  Mere- 
dith," he  says,  "  is  an  original  writer,  and  his  book  is  a 
powerful  book,  penetrative  in  its  depth  of  insight  and 
rich  in  its  variety  of  experience."     Carefully  he  makes 
good  his  contention  against  the  final  catastrophe,  by 
which,  as  he  justly  remarks,  nothing  is  proved  or  dis- 
proved  in  regard    to    the  "  System."      The   work,   he 
decides,  is  strangely  imperfect,  but  "  so  crystalline  and 
brilliant  in  its  principal  passages,  there  is  such  purity 
mingled  with  its  laxness,  such  sound  and  firm  truth  in 
the  midst  of  its  fantastic  subtleties  "  that  its  greatness 
is  not  to  be  questioned.     And  with  page  after  page  of 
quotation  he  makes  that  greatness  apparent,  turning  at 
last  to  the  challenge  underlying  the  protests  of  almost 
all  the  objectors.   "  This  book,"  he  concludes,  "  has  been 
charged  with  impurity,  and  tabooed,  as  we  hear,  in  some 


OUTLINE   OF    MEREDITH'S    LIFE         13 

quarters  by  the  over-fastidious.  It  certainly  touches  a 
delicate  theme,  and  includes  some  equivocal  situations, 
but  of  impurity,  in  the  sense  of  any  corrupting  ten- 
dency, we  see  not  a  trace."  This  quality  of  apprecia- 
tion was  not  likely  to  be  common,  and  another  twenty 
years  were  to  elapse  before  James  Thomson  could  write 
in  his  Diary  i1  " Athenaeum  advertisement  of  Egoist: 
cordial  praise  from  Athcnczuw,  Pall  Mall,  Spectator, 
Examiner.  At  length  encouragement !  A  man  of 
wonderful  genius  and  a  splendid  writer  may  hope  to 
obtain  something  like  recognition  after  working  hard 
for  thirty  years,  dating  from  his  majority  ! " 

Words  such  as  these,  from  one  in  the  thick  of  the 
fight,  are  reasonable  enough,  but  surely  there  is  cause 
for  complaint  in  the  corresponding  attitude  of  many  of 
Meredith's  later  admirers,  implying,  as  it  does,  an  in- 
sistence on  their  hero's  discomfort  at  the  want  of  a 
more  universal  appreciation  of  his  work.  No  man  is 
better  able  to  estimate  the  facts  of  the  case  than  is 
Meredith.  He  wrote  from  the  first,  and  determined  to 
write,  in  advance  of  his  age ;  and  to  suppose  that  his 
maturer  years  have  been  spent  in  cavilling  at  the 
price  his  youthful  idealism  was  willing  to  pay,  is  no  less 
than  absurd.  His  modern  adherents,  in  natural  resent- 
ment at  any  neglect  of  his  genius,  have  been  inclined 
to  take  half-truths  for  the  whole,  and  certain  words  of 
his  own  have  given  colour  to  reports  of  his  misan- 
thropy. "  My  way,"  he  says,  "  is  like  a  Rhone  island 
in  the  summer  drought,  stony,  unattractive  and  difficult 
between  the  two  forceful  streams  of  the  unreal  and  the 
over-real.  My  people  conquer  nothing,  win  none  ;  they 
are  actual  yet  uncommon.  It  is  the  clockwork  of  the 
brain  that  they  are  directed  to  set  in  motion,  and — 
poor  troop  of  actors  to  vacant  benches — the  conscience 

1  November  8th,  1S79. 


14  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

residing  in  thoughtfulness  which  they  would  appeal  to  ; 
and  if  you  are  there  impervious  to  them,  we  are  lost;  back 
I  go  to  my  wilderness,  where,  as  you  perceive,  I  have 
contracted  the  habit  of  listening  to  my  own  voice  more 
than  is  good."1  And  he  is  represented  as  lately  as 
July,  1904,  as  replying  to  an  interviewer:  "The  English 
people  know  nothing  about  me.  There  always  has 
been  something  antipathetic  between  them  and  me. 
With  book  after  book  it  was  always  the  same  outcry  of 
censure  and  disapproval.  The  first  time  or  two  I 
minded  it.  Since,  I  have  written  to  please  myself."2  He 
has  even  been  represented  as  like  his  Diana,  "writing 
his  best  in  perverseness."  Some  such  spirit  is  to  be 
detected  in  the  lines  that  prefaced  the  first  edition  of 
Modern  Love,  in  1862  : — 

This  is  not  meat 

For  little  people  or  for  fools, 

and  in  the  Note,  refuting  allegorical  intention,  pre- 
faced, in  1865,  to  the  second  edition  of  Shagpat ;  but 
it  is  far  indeed  from  representing  his  permanent  atti- 
tude to  his  public.  His  maturer  taste  is  of  a  quality 
that  would  make  any  brandishing  of  superiority  impos- 
sible to  him,  but  the  change  is  even  deeper-rooted  than 
that.  His  faith  in  democracy  has  grown  firmer  and 
brighter  with  years,3  and  his  latest  poems,  such  as  The 
Empty  Purse  and,  most  notably,  Foresight  and  Patience, 
are  steeped  in  a  passionate  feeling  for  his  kind. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  Meredith's  work  was 
appreciated  from  the  first  by  the  critics  capable  of  ap- 
preciating it.  The  names  of  George  Eliot,  Kingsley, 
and  James  Thomson  have  been  cited  already;  and 
Carlyle's   comment   on   Richard  Feverel,  "This  man's 

1  Bcauchamp's  Career. 

a  Henry  W.  Nevinson  in  the  Daily  Chronicle,  July  5th,  1905. 

3  'ate  Letter  to  Dorking  Women 's  Liberal  Association,  May,  1904. 


OUTLINE   OF    MEREDITH'S   LIFE         15 

no  fule!"  must,  even  at  the  time,  have  outweighed  the 
remarks  of  a  hundred  reviewers.     For  fame,  Meredith 
had,  as  those  of  his  calibre  always  have  had,  to  wait. 
But  "  If,"  as  Mr.  Trevelyan  adroitly  remarks,  "  the  gods 
showed  their  love  for  Shelley  by  causing  him  to  die 
young,  they  have  shown   their  love  for  Mr.  Meredith 
in  a  more  satisfactory  manner,  by  leaving  him  to  re- 
ceive from  us  in  old  age  the  homage  that  was  due  to 
him  from  our  grandfathers,"1  and  for  thirty  years  at 
least  fame  has  now  been  his  portion.     His  popularity,  a 
demand  for  his  books  at  the  circulating  libraries,  did 
not  indeed   begin   until    1885,  with  the  publication  of 
Diana,  and  it  has  been  the  fashion  with  certain  of  his 
aforesaid  admirers  to  comment  on  this  in  bewilderment. 
It  was  not,  say  they,  to  be  expected  that  The  Egoist 
would  be  enthusiastically  received,  but  Evan  Harring- 
ton and  Rhoda  Fleming — surely  these  were  as  well  fitted 
as  Diana  of  the  Crossways  to  appeal  to  popular  favour  ? 
The  contention  as  to  the  relative  merits  of  the  earlier 
novels  is  too  obvious  to  need  support,  yet  the  circum- 
stance the  critics  exclaim  at  is  not,  in  fact,  an  enigma. 
Evan  Harrington  and  Rhoda  Fleming  had  made  their 
appearance  some  twenty  years  earlier,  when  the  Time 
Spirit  as  yet  was  not  ripe ;  and  Diana,  moreover,  was 
known  to  be  founded  on   a  substratum  of  sensational 
incident  which,  even  if  the  book  had  been  comparatively 
worthless,  would  have  ensured  its  notoriety  with  the 
novel-reading  public.     And  such  notoriety,  though  not 
in  itself  to  be  taken  very  seriously,  may  well,  as  in  this 
case  it  did,  serve  as  an  introduction  to  the  many  who  are 
able  to  appreciate  elements  of  more  substantial  and  en- 
during worth.     And  Meredith  is  far  too  great  not  to 
rejoice  in  the  widespread  appreciation  that  is  now  his 
fortune.     He  would,  without  doubt,  have  held  on  his 

1   The  Poetry  and  Philosophy  of  George  Meredith. 


16  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

way,  however  lonely  that  way  might  have  proved ; 
though  to  say  this  is  not  to  suppose  him  indifferent  to 
misconception  and  apathy.  His  work  is  the  fruit  of  a 
rare  combination  of  sensitiveness  and  strength.  In  his 
early  days  it  was  inevitable  that  sensitiveness  should  be 
uppermost ;  it  was  no  less  inevitable  that  it  should  be 
quickly  subdued  to  its  place  ;  no  man,  living  or  dead, 
has  waged  such  war  on  Self- Pity  as  he.  To  fail  to 
recognise  this,  and  by  sentimental  enthusiasm  to  come 
within  sight  of  attributing  to  Meredith  a  belittling  of 
the  admiration  he  receives,  is  to  offer  an  offence  instead 
of  a  tribute  to  his  work. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   SHAVING   OF   SHAGPAT, 
AND    FARINA 

GEORGE  ELIOT,  writing  in  The  Leaders  January, 
1856,  speaks  of  The  Shaving  of  Shagpat  as  "a 
work  of  genius,"  precious  "  as  an  apple  tree  among 
the  trees  of  the  wood."  The  author  himself  styled  it 
An  Arabian  Entertainment,  and  prefaced  the  second 
edition  of  1865  with  a  note  professing  to  disclaim  for 
it  any  allegorical  intention.  When  we  consider  the 
bias  of  George  Eliot's  mind,  there  is  something  a  little 
conflicting  in  the  descriptions,  but  the  difficulty  may 
disappear  when  we  are  face  to  face  with  the  author's 
pronouncement :  "  It  has,"  he  says,  "been  suggested  to 
me  by  one  who  has  no  fear  of  Allegories  on  the  banks 
of  the  Nile,"  and,  proceeding  to  recite  not  very  ade- 
quate or  illuminating  suggestions  as  to  his  meaning, 
he  ends  with  the  assertion  :  "  Allegories  to  be  of  any 
value  must  be  perfectly  clear,  and  when  perfectly  clear, 
are  as  little  attractive  as  Mrs.  Malaprop's  reptile." 
With  a  writer  much  less  subtle  than  Meredith,  the  key 
in  which  the  opening  sentence  of  the  disclaimer  is 
pitched  might  have  sounded  a  warning  to  arrest  the 
reader's  attention,  and  set  him  on  his  guard  against 
being  beguiled. 

The  root  idea  of  the  allegory  is  plain  enough.     It 
c  17 


i8  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

is  suggested    in    a   rhyme  on  the  third    page   of   the 

'  Thou  that  dreamest  an  Event, 

While  circumstance  is  but  a  waste  of  sand, 
Arise,  take  up  thy  fortunes  in  thy  hand 
And  daily  forward  pitch  thy  tent. 

The  young  barber,  Shibli  Bagarag,  goes  through  many 
toils  and  vicissitudes  but  he  achieves  his  purpose  of 
shaving  Shagpat,  and  is  crowned  with  the  proudest  of 
titles,  "  Master  of  an  event."  His  experience,  and  its 
fruitfulness  for  others,  are  summed  up  at  the  close  of  the 
book,  again  in  rhyme  : — 

Ye  that  nourish  hopes  of  fame  ! 

Ye  who  would  be  known  in  song  ! 
Ponder  old  history,  and  duly  frame 
Your  souls  to  meek  acceptance  of  the  thong. 

Lo  !  of  hundreds  who  aspire 

Eighties  perish — nineties  tire  ! 
They  who  bear  up,  in  spite  of  wrecks  and  wracks, 
Were  season'd  by  celestial  hail  of  thwacks. 

Fortune  in  this  mortal  race 

Builds  on  thwackings  for  its  base  ; 
Thus  the  All-Wise  doth  make  a  flail  a  staff, 
And  separates  his  heavenly  corn  from  chaff. 

Shibli  Bagarag,  we  perceive,  stands  for  a  reformer  ; 
Shagpat  is  the  abuse  with  which  he  is  to  contend.  So 
much  is  plain  to  us  all.  But  beyond  this  point  most  of 
the  meaning  of  the  allegory  is  so  enwrapped  in  the 
incidents  that  it  has  waited  half  a  century  for  an  inter- 
preter. Within  the  past  year  the  task  has  been  essayed 
by  the  Reverend  James  McKechnie,1  and  performed 
with  striking  success.  He  has  included  all  that  was, 
within  the  limits  of  one  short  lecture,  possible  to  include, 
and  the  special  merit  of  his  treatment  is  the  way  in 
which  he  has  confined  himself  to  an  elucidation  of  the 
main  issues  of  the  story.     Shagpat,  he  tells  us,  is  to  be 

1  George  Meredith's  Allegory,  The  Shaving  of  Shagpat,  interpreted  by 
James  McKechnie.     James  M'Kelvie  and  Sons  :  Greenock. 


THE   SHAVING   OF   SHAGPAT  19 

interpreted  freely,  as  any  established  evil,  any  baneful 
superstition,  any  tyranny  of  lies.  He  calls  our  atten- 
tion to  Meredith's  understanding  of  the  nature  of  a 
genuine  reformer.  Shibli  Bagarag  is  no  iconoclast ;  the 
shave  he  proposed  at  first  was  no  root-and-crop  destruc- 
tion, but  the  removal  merely  of  certain  gross  and 
obvious  abuses  ;  a  cleansing  in  the  interests  of  health 
and  decency.  But  the  world's  Shagpats  never  consent 
to  a  friendly  shave,  they  are  blind  to  the  friendliness  of 
it,  and  "  thwack  "  the  would-be  operator.  This  thwack- 
ing process  proves  too  much  for  the  great  majority  of 
budding  reformers,  who  relapse  to  their  native  obscurity 
forthwith.  Only  the  chosen  few,  the  men  of  true  great- 
ness, remain.  Shibli  Bagarag  sustains  the  ordeal,  and 
proves  his  mettle  by  betrothing  himself  to  Noorna-bin- 
Noorka,  the  ugliest  member  of  the  family  of  the  Duties, 
spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  through  following  Noorna's 
suggestions  that  some  at  least  of  his  thwackings  have 
come.  "  Duty  when  betrothed  becomes  Ambition,"  and 
that  is  the  name  by  which  to  Shibli  Bagarag  Noorna  is 
henceforth  to  be  known  ;  it  is  her  true  title.  The  youth 
does  not  yet  love  her,  but  he  is  loyal  to  her,  and  his 
loyalty  is  rewarded  by  radiant  flashings  through  the 
veil  of  her  ugliness,  tokens  and  promises  of  a  beauty 
that  is  to  be.  "  Ugly  Noornas  are  the  blood-royal  of 
Heaven.  Heaven  awaits  those  who  betroth  them." 
Fired  and  elevated  with  ambition,  Shibli  Bagarag  de- 
velops within  himself  amazing  resources.  By  concen- 
tration of  aim  he  becomes  larger  and  wiser,  and  gets 
the  grip  of  his  own  greatness.  We  hear  much  of 
magical  aid  in  his  enterprise,  but  it  should  be  noted 
that  his  spirit-bride,  Noorna-bin-Noorka,  the  "  sorceress 
ensorcelled,"  does  not  bestow  the  three  spells  on  him  ; 
she  merely  puts  him  in  the  way  of  securing  them  for 
himself.   The  first,  Water  from  the  Well  of  Paravid,  was 


20  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

only  to  be  obtained  by  a  fearless  plunge  into  an  ap- 
parently bottomless  well  from  which  the  diver  emerged 
with  blood  on  the  hand  that  was  holding  his  treasure. 
The  well  is  the  Well  of  Truth,  and  its  waters  have 
power  to  make  things  animate  and  inanimate  reveal 
their  true  natures.  Possession  of  the  Phial  signifies  the 
gift  of  Insight,  the  seeing  eye  and  the  understanding 
heart.  The  second  is  Three  Hairs  from  the  Tail  of  the 
horse  Garaveen,  who  is  to  be  brought  to  Shibli 
Bagarag's  side  by  the  Call  of  Battle,  to  be  caught 
by  being  struck  on  the  fetlock  with  a  Musk  Ball,  and 
to  be  tamed  by  having  the  figure  of  the  Crescent 
traced  upon  his  forehead.  Garaveen  symbolises  En- 
thusiasm ;  and  the  three  actions  are  the  three  hairs  or 
strands  that  go  to  make  up  the  spell.  The  Call  to 
Battle  is  the  merely  instinctive  enthusiasm,  the  war- 
rior's delight,  the  pugilist's  fervour;  the  Musk  Ball  is 
sensuous  glamour,  passionate  activity,  conscious  joy  in 
creation  ;  the  Crescent — the  power  to  tame  Garaveen, 
to  yoke  him  to  the  plough,  to  give  him  capacity  for 
drudgery — is  religion.  Third  and  last  of  the  charms  is 
the  Lily  of  the  Lovely  Light,  the  Lily  of  the  Enchanted 
Sea.  This  is  the  Soul's  Ideal,  its  vision  of  the  kingdom 
that  should  be  on  the  earth.  There  are  ideals  rooted 
only  in  the  intellect  and  serviceable  merely  for  purposes 
of  criticism  ;  Shibli  Bagarag's  was  not  of  this  kind,  it 
had  for  root  a  living,  palpitating  heart  and  compelled 
him  to  action.  Shibli  Bagarag  and  his  bride  were 
carried  to  the  Well  of  Paravid  by  the  evil  genie  Karaz 
in  the  form  of  an  enchanted  ass,  "  Men  see  the  right 
by  the  assistance  of  the  wrong.  They  are  carried  to 
truth  on  the  back  of  falsehood.  Error  plays  the  ass 
and  helps  the  reformer."  Shibli  is  now  equipped  with 
the  three  essentials  for  his  enterprise,  "  Insight — accu- 
rate knowledge  of  things  as  they  are  ;  Idealism — clear 


THE   SHAVING   OF   SHAGPAT  21 

vision  of  things  as  they  ought  to  be ;  Enthusiasm — 
strength  to  change  things  as  they  are  into  things  as 
they  ought  to  be,"  but  nothing  is  yet  achieved.  He  has 
the  spells  but  he  has  not  used  them  :  he  is  not  master 
of  an  event.  It  is  time  for  him  to  press  forward. 
Noorna  points  him  to  the  signal  of  his  approach 
flaming  on  the  mountains  of  Aklis  and  tells  him  that 
the  sword  which  is  being  sharpened  there,  the  sword  for 
the  shaving  of  Shagpat,  awaits  his  arrival.  But  Shibli 
Bagarag  is  weary ;  that  passion  for  reality  which  has 
singled  him  out  from  his  fellows,  for  the  time  being  is 
spent.  He  loses  grip  of  his  will,  allows  his  mind  to  be 
unemployed,  and  passes  into  the  realm  of  Rabesqurat, 
Queen  of  Illusions,  the  realm  of  drifting.  This  place 
had  proved  fatal  to  many,  if  not  to  most,  of  the 
searchers  for  the  sword,  and  Shibli  Bagarag  might, 
"  for  any  self-control  he  was  exercising,  have  plunged 
into  some  tank  of  temptation,  and  wallowed  there  until 
return  to  cleanness  and  strength  was  impossible.  But 
his  fair  heredity,  his  wholesome  instincts  —  the  self 
within  the  self  saved  him."  And  now  we  come  to 
Aklis.  "  Shagpatism  represents  life  in  its  institutional 
aspect,  full  of  errors,  superstitions  and  wrongs.  The 
Quest  of  the  Spells  represents  life  in  its  aspiring  and 
disciplinary  aspect,  a  school  wherein,  by  much  effort 
and  hardship,  man  may  learn  wisdom.  The  Realm  of 
Rabesqurat  represents  life  in  its  frivolous,  pleasure- 
loving,  superficial  aspect.  Aklis  represents  life  in  what 
may  be  called  its  legal  aspect,  using  that  word  not  in 
its  institutional  but  its  cosmic  sense.  This  devil's 
lottery  of  existence,  this  chaotic  tossing  and  tumbling 
of  things — see  it  through  the  eye  of  Aklis  and  all  is 
order,  law,  government.  '  No  aid  or  friendliness  in 
Aklis.'  No  chance  or  injustice  in  Aklis.  Here  the  un- 
seen powers  keep  shop.     All  manner  of  merchandise, 


22  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

suiting  every  taste,  is  to  be  got  in  exchange  for  spells. 
But   without   spells,   appointed    and    of   proportionate 
value,  nothing  is  to  be  got,  for  the  unseen  powers  are 
strict    merchant-men    and    no   dispensers    of    charity." 
Aklis  is  the  realm,  not  of  efforts,  but  of  results,  and  to 
linger  there  is  disastrous.     Men  destined  for  greatness 
must    pass    through     it     quickly,    claiming   whatever 
weapons  their  spells  can  procure.     But  Shibli  Bagarag 
finds  himself  greeted  there  as  famous,  the  foremost  man 
of  his  age,  possessed  of  the  three  mighty  Spells ;  he  is 
tempted  to  rest  awhile  on  his  laurels.     He  is  snared  by 
the  Duping  Brides.    "  He  is  represented  in  the  Allegory 
as  a  benumbed  and  pathetic  piece  of  statuary,  sitting  on 
a  throne  from  which  he  could  not  move,  crowned  with  a 
crown  of  bejewelled  asses'  ears.     Wanted  immediately 
a  shower  of  lusty  thwacks — thwacks  with  a  sting  in 
them    to    be    applied    for    the    awakening    of  Shibli 
Bagarag.     Alas !  the  world  has  no  thwacks  for  Shibli 
Bagarag.     Ear-tickling,  soothing  flatteries  are  its  gift 
to  him  now.     Praise  God,  man  can  come  to  his  own 
rescue.     Man  can  thwack  himself.     As  he  sat  on  that 
benumbing  throne  the  memory  of  his  Noorna,  his  duty 
and  his  ambition,  came  mightily  and  reproachfully  on 
the  youth.     He  laughed  the  thinkers  laugh — the  bitter 
laugh  of  self-criticism — potent  to  break  all  bonds  of 
evil   magic,  to   set  all  captives  free.     What  was  that 
laugh  but  Shibli  Bagarag  thwacking  himself?      Self- 
inflicted  thwacks  hurt  most  and  heal  most  when  there  is 
humour  in  the  administering  of  them.     The  man  who 
cannot  laugh  at  himself  is  in  bondage  to  himself.     The 
man  who  cannot  see  over  his  own  shoulders  will  never 
grow  taller.     Self-criticism  is  the  chief  saving-grace  of 
life ;  had  Shibli  Bagarag  not   possessed   it  his  career 
would  certainly  have  closed  in  that  Hall  of  the  Duping 
Brides.      As   it   was  he  arose  in  chastened   mood   to 


THE   SHAVING   OF   SHAGPAT  23 

seek  the  sword."  The  Sons  of  Aklis,  sharpeners  of  the 
sword,  represent  the  Time-Spirit,  and  they  have  the 
weapon  in  waiting  for  Shibli.  The  Sword  is  the  em- 
blem of  destruction  ;  Shagpat's  opportunity  for  survival 
by  submission  to  a  friendly,  conservative  cleansing  is 
past.  But  before  it  is  placed  in  Shibli's  hands  he  is 
required  to  surrender  his  spells  to  Gulrevez,  the  milk- 
white  antelope.  "  Masters  of  events,  saviours  of  the 
world,  have  necessarily  escaped  from  cramping  and 
betraying  personal  motives.  They  are  men  who  reso- 
lutely sacrifice  themselves,  and  who  hold  the  sword  at 
the  price  of  sacrifice.  By  finally  abandoning  self- 
seeking,  by  sinking  himself  and  all  that  he  had  in  his 
cause,  Shibli  Bagarag  became  a  mighty  and  a  con- 
secrated power.  The  sword  of  the  Lord  was  in  his 
hands."  But  so  great  a  power  is  dangerous  to  wield. 
Shibli  had  learned  the  lightning-like  qualities  of  the 
sword,  and  as  he  recrossed  the  stream  that  divides 
Aklis  from  the  world,  he  was  evilly  tempted  to  flash  it 
in  order  to  discover  the  features  of  the  Veiled  Figure 
ferrying  the  boat.  The  sight  froze  and  paralysed  his 
limbs.  Hideously  he  laughed  like  one  insane.  "  In  her 
nameless  nature  he  saw  Rabesqurat  Queen  of  Illusions. 
Shibli  Bagarag  had  seen  Rabesqurat  before.  He  had 
examined  her  by  the  light  of  the  lily,  and  seen  a  '  sight 
to  blacken  the  earth  and  all  bright  things  with  its 
hideousness,'  but  strange  to  say,  so  little  did  the  sight 
affect  him  that  almost  immediately  he  was  on  good 
terms  with  the  Queen  again.  What  the  flashing  of  the 
sword  showed  him,  though  scarcely  worse  in  itself,  had 
an  immeasurably  worse  effect  on  him.  It  blighted  him, 
drove  strength  and  sunshine  from  him,  well-nigh 
paralysed  him  for  life.  There  behold  the  terrible 
privilege  of  earnestness.  Dilettantish  pessimists  have 
been  known  to  number  themselves  among  those  sad 


24  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

initiates,  those  wisdom-blighted  ones  who  have  looked 
behind  the  Veil  and  seen  the  nameless  sight.  They 
have,  at  most,  seen  Rabesqurat  by  the  light  of  the 
lily — something  vastly  different  from  seeing  her  by  the 
flashing  of  the  sword."  At  last  Shibli  Bagarag's 
training  was  complete,  and  he  was  equal  to  his  task. 
He  is  cautious  now  in  his  daring,  calm  in  his  impulse. 
His  enemy  is  taken  unawares ;  in  the  hour  of  his 
triumph  the  sword  of  Aklis  descends.  Fearful  was 
the  struggle  that  ensued,  genii  and  men  taking  part 
in  it,  but  at  its  end  "  day  was  on  the  baldness  of 
Shagpat." 

It  has  seemed  the  best,  and  in  fact  the  only  adequate, 
method  of  paying  just  tribute  to  Mr.  McKechnie's 
achievement  to  give  this  short  abstract  of  his  lecture 
uninterrupted  by  interpolation  or  comment.  His  limit 
of  time  was  severe,  and  the  success  of  his  undertaking 
is  largely  due  to  rigid  exclusion  of  side  issues  and 
complexities  ;  moreover,  the  Afterword  he  has  added  to 
his  interpretation  makes  it  quite  clear  that  the  delicate 
and  elusive  qualities  of  the  work  have  in  no  way 
escaped  his  attention.  The  Genie  Karaz  is,  perhaps,  a 
little  too  summarily  dismissed.  His  power  is  immense, 
and  Noorna  in  telling  Shibli  Bagarag  of  her  past  re- 
calls his  terrific  schemes  for  the  perversion  and  destruc- 
tion of  mankind  and  his  influence  in  her  life.  He 
would  seem  to  stand  for  the  perverted  and  misdirected 
forces  of  the  world  which  the  wise  man  must  en- 
counter and  subdue  in  order  to  mould  them  to  his  ends. 
When  Noorna  first  summons  the  genie  she  replies  to 
her  father's  objections  to  making  use  of  him — 

It  is  the  sapiency  of  fools 

To  shrink  from  handling  evil  tools, 

and,  through  much  danger  and  difficulty,  she  subdues 
him  to  the  shape  of  an  ass  and  renders  him  otherwise 


THE   SHAVING   OF   SHAGPAT  25 

serviceable  to  her  bidding.  There  is  kinship  between 
this  idea  and  the  fact  that  the  Waters  of  Paravid 
include  in  their  virtue  the  kind  of  insight  required  for 
the  comprehension  and  management  of  men.  On  his 
return  from  the  Well,  Noorna  welcomes  her  lover  with 
the  words,  "  'Tis  achieved,  the  first  of  thy  tasks ;  for 
mutely  on  the  fresh  red  of  thy  mouth,  my  betrothed, 
speaketh  the  honey  of  persuasiveness."  She  replies  to 
Shibli's  question  as  to  how  he  is  to  find  his  way  unaided 
to  the  City  of  Oolb,  with  the  reminder  that  a  drop 
from  his  phial  will  endow  the  very  herbage,  stones,  and 
sand  of  the  desert,  with  powers  of  speech ;  yet  two 
pages  later  we  come  on  the  injunction,  "Where  men 
are,  question  not  dumb  things,"  as  the  only  response  to 
be  elicited  from  a  city  fountain  questioned  by  Shibli. 
This  is  a  characteristically  Meredithian  touch.  No  man 
ranks  the  magic  of  natural  things  higher  than  he, 
but  it  is  to  be  studied  chiefly  as  a  means  to  an  end, 
and  that  end  the  comprehension  of  ourselves  and  our 
fellows.  His  seer  is  one  who  "hither,  thither  fares, 
close  interthreading  nature  with  our  kind,"1  and  he 
condemns  the  out-of-door  enthusiast  in  the  last  of  his 
novels  for  "studying  abstract  and  adoring  surface 
nature  too  exclusively  to  be  aware  of  the  manifesta- 
tion of  her  spirit  in  the  flesh."2 

We  have  quoted  Mr.  McKechnie's  excellent  com- 
ments on  the  laugh  of  self-criticism  that  released 
Shibli  from  the  Hall  of  the  Duping  Brides.  But  it  is 
not  at  this  point  only  that  the  Allegory  insists  on  the 
uses  of  laughter  ;  the  idea  is  elsewhere  recurrent.  The 
men  enslaved  by  the  evil  magician  Goorelka,  and 
changed  into  birds  piping  at  her  pleasure,  are  freed 
and  restored  as  soon  as  Noorna  has  succeeded  in  keep- 
ing them  laughing  uninterruptedly  for  the  space  of  an 

1  Earth? s  Secret.  2  The  Amazing  Marriage ^  chapter  xxv. 


26  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

hour  ;  and  the  full  virtue  and  valour  of  that  cleansing 
laugh  in  the  Hall  is  only  revealed  to  us  as  we  consider 
the  nature  of  the  experiences  that  preceded  it.  From 
the  Realm  of  Rabesqurat,  with  all  its  appeal  to  the 
senses,  Shibli  Bagarag  had  made  his  escape.  Conse- 
quently, here  in  Aklis,  he  has  been  immune  from 
temptations  offered  by  the  fountains  of  jewels,  the 
scented  halls,  and  the  marvels  of  the  feast.  It  was 
only  to  the  blandishments  of  the  seven-and-twenty 
damsels,  robed  in  the  colours  of  the  rising  and  setting 
sun,  and  waiting  to  hail  and  crown  him  as  their  king, 
that  he  ultimately  succumbed.  He  had  taken  the  pre- 
caution, moreover,  to  hold  the  Lily  to  the  faces  of  the 
maidens  and  to  wet  their  lips  with  water  from  the 
Phial,  and  no  change  had  taken  place  in  their  beauty 
or  their  bearing,  except  that  they  each  broke  into  luting 
and  singing  of  verses  descriptive  of  their  various  tem- 
peraments. One,  light  as  an  antelope  on  the  hills,  with 
timid,  graceful  movements,  sang  : — 

Swiftness  is  mine,  and  I  fly  from  the  sordid  ; 

another,  with  arrows  of  fire  in  her  eyes,  and  voiced  like 
the  passionate  bulbul  in  the  shadows  of  the  moon, 
sang,  clasping  her  hands : — 

Love  is  my  life,  and  with  love  I  live  only, 
Give  me  life,  lover,  and  leave  me  not  lonely  ; 

whilst  one  came  straight  up  to  Shibli,  took  him  by  the 
hand  and  pierced  him  with  her  glance,  singing : — 

Were  we  not  destined  to  meet  by  one  planet  ? 
Can  a  fate  sever  us  ?  can  it,  ah  !  can  it  ? 

Shibli  succumbs,  and  he  is  crowned  and  enthroned  in  a 
small  inner  chamber  ;  crowned,  as  he  is  presently  to 
discover,  with  asses'  ears  and  glued  to  his  throne.  His 
charmers  depart ;  the  door  of  his  chamber  is  shut ;  and 
he  is  left  in  thick  darkness,  alone.     He  cannot  get  free 


THE   SHAVING   OF   SHAGPAT  27 

of  his  throne,  but  his  agonised  efforts  avail  to  move  it, 
as  he  sits,  out  into  the  Hall  of  the  Brides.  There  the 
doors  of  ninety-eight  recesses  stand  open,  and  ninety- 
eight  other  dupes,  solemn  and  motionless  on  their 
thrones,  are  displayed  to  his  sight.  There  seems  small 
hope  of  freedom  for  Shibli ;  many  of  these  monarchs 
are  old,  and  all  appear  to  have  been  long  in  their 
places.  Yet  the  sight  of  fellow  dupes  may  give  him 
an  opening  for  mirth.  But  Shibli  does  not  laugh,  he 
does  not  even  smile,  till  his  eyes  light  on  a  mirror  that 
reflects  the  crown  on  his  forehead.  Then,  not  at  the 
sight  of  the  ludicrous  appearance  of  others,  but  at 
his  own  idiotic  predicament,  he  shakes  the  Hall  with 
his  laughter. 

Great  stress  is  laid  by  Mr.  McKechnie  on  the  fact 
that  when  Shibli  has  peered  through  the  veil  of  the 
Ferrying  Figure,  he  does  not  say  what  he  has  seen. 
"  Rabesqurat,"  says  Mr.  McKechnie,  "  in  her  nameless 
nature,  it  is  forbidden  to  speak  of  her.  God  seals  the 
lips  of  those  whom  he  lets  peer  behind  the  Veil."  Is 
not  this  interpretation  at  once  too  definite  and  too 
vague  ?  Shibli  himself  gasps  the  name  "  Rabesqurat," 
but  it  is  clear  that  what  he  sees  cannot  be  the  Queen  of 
Illusions  as  she  was  shown  to  us  earlier.  Sensuous 
enticements  cannot  befool  him  now,  it  must  be  im- 
possible therefore  to  terrify  him  with  revelations  of 
their  illusion.  The  change  in  standpoint  is  subtle,  but 
it  is  essential.  Of  old,  the  Queen  pitted  her  immediate 
satisfactions  of  sense  against  the  life  of  the  spirit,  and 
for  a  while  she  prevailed.  "  The  soul  of  Shibli  Bagarag 
was  blinded  by  Rabesqurat  in  the  depths  of  the 
Enchanted  Sea.  She  sang  to  him,  luting  deliriously ; 
and  he  was  intoxicated  with  the  blissfulness  of  his  for- 
tune, and  took  a  lute  and  sang  to  her  love-verses  in 
praise  of  her,  rhyming  his  rapture.     Then  they  handed 


28  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

the  goblet  to  each  other,  and  drank  till  they  were  on 
fire  with  the  joy  of  things."  Temptation,  then,  took  a 
comparatively  elementary  form ;  illusions  were  mis- 
taken for  realities.  The  matter  is  vastly  different  now  ; 
and  the  key  to  the  difference  is  to  be  found  in  the  title 
of  the  Ferrying  Figure.  This  last  and  latest  tempta- 
tion is  the  very  converse  of  the  earlier  wiles  of  Rabes- 
qurat.  The  reformer  aflame  with  his  mission  is  suddenly 
confronted  with  the  visage  of  Death,  and  every  health- 
ful and  natural  instinct  of  his  nature,  for  the  time  being, 
is  paralysed.  He  loses  hold  on  reality,  he  sees  Life 
itself  as  an  Illusion.  His  sense  of  values  is  lost,  he 
ceases  to  be  interested  in  his  existence,  and  it  is  due  to 
the  friendship  of  Abarak  and  the  bracing  affection  of 
Noorna  that  the  ashes  of  his  spirit  are  ever  rekindled. 
If  there  are  any  who  require  to  be  convinced  either  of 
the  greatness  of  the  Allegory,  or  of  Meredith's  under- 
standing of  human  life,  they  cannot  do  better  than  turn 
to  these  three  chapters,  "  The  Veiled  Figure,"  "  The 
Bosom  of  Noorna,"  and  "  The  Revival,"  some  eleven 
pages  in  all.  The  Reformer  has  been  trained,  tested, 
and  fully  equipped  for  his  task  ;  his  spells  are  surren- 
dered, his  life  is  dedicate,  when  this  final  disaster  over- 
takes him.  Connecting  the  experience  with  Rabesqurat, 
we  see  it  as  merely  the  swing  of  the  pendulum,  the  old 
incapacity  for  separating  illusion  from  reality,  seen  on 
its  reverse  side.  The  truth  seems  simple  enough  now 
it  is  revealed,  but  the  discovery  is  Meredith's  and  not 
ours.  For  in  life,  as  in  Shagpat,  the  two  forms  of 
seduction  lie  far  apart.  The  first  is  obvious  and  depends 
upon  man's  ignorance.  The  second  is  subtle  and 
avails  itself  of  his  knowledge  ;  it  is  the  temptation  of 
the  spiritually  minded,  of  those  who  are  learning  to 
"  sit  lightly  to  the  world,"  and  loose  the  tenacity  of 
their  grasp  on   tangible  and   material   concerns.      An 


FARINA  29 

ascetic  has  claimed  that  no  genuine  Contemplative 
forgets  or  neglects  the  details  of  his  or  her  organisation 
or  Order,  and  he  instances  the  extraordinary  capacity 
for  detail  of  such  minds  as  St.  Catherine's.  On  this 
point  at  least  Meredith  and  he  would  find  themselves 
in  agreement.  But  there  is  in  existence  a  pseudo- 
mysticism  far  from  uncommon,  which  allows  its  semi- 
philosophic  emphasis  on  transiency  and  mortality  to 
paralyse  the  only  means  of  expression  of  which  man's 
spirit  is  assured.  The  familiar  "  We  will  eat  and  drink, 
for  to-morrow  we  die"  of  the  courtiers  of  Rabesqurat 
is  complicated  now.  "  To-morrow  we  die "  stands  at 
the  beginning  of  the  aphorism,  and  in  the  shadow  of  it 
all  human  organisation  and  effort  sink  to  the  level  of 
eating  and  drinking. 

It  is  curious  that,  amid  the  chorus  of  more  or  less 
intelligent  appreciation  by  which  George  Meredith  in 
his  old  age  is  surrounded,  no  voice  should  have  been 
raised  to  comment  on  the  fact  that  last  year — 1906 — 
marked  the  jubilee  of  his  advent  as  a  novelist.  The 
explanation  probably  is  that  even  among  the  small 
number  of  readers  acquainted  with  The  Shaving  of 
Shagpat  and  Farina  very  few  are  aware  how  long  ago 
it  is  that  they  were  written.  No  mark  of  age  is  borne 
by  their  contents,  and  it  is  almost  impossible  to  regard 
them  as  two  generations  old,  at  least  till  they  are  seen 
in  their  original  dress.  Some  strangeness  there  cer- 
tainly is  about  the  rough  pea-green  cover  and  coarse 
gilt  lettering  of  the  Farina  of  1857 — a  strangeness 
shared  by  the  tone  of  the  criticism  which  greeted  it. 
The  Saturday  Review  cavilled  at  the  redundance  of  its 
language,  attributing  the  fault  to  the  influence  of  "  Mr. 
Ruskin,  who  has  taught  young  writers  to  lay  on  their 
colours  too  bright  and  too  thick."  The  Athenceum  is 
more  appreciative  of  Meredith's  powers  in  general,  but, 


30  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

in  regard  to  this  book  in  particular,  the  reviewer 
inclines  to  take  with  one  hand  what  he  has  given  with 
the  other.  "  Farina"  he  says,  " is  a  full-blooded  speci- 
men of  the  nonsense  of  genius." 

The  main  motive  is  a  well-sustained  renderiner  of 
romantic  adventure  in  a  medieval  setting.  The  story 
tells  how  Farina,  a  youth  of  Cologne,  who  has  all  the 
courage  of  his  companions  without  their  barbarous 
methods  of  showing  it,  wins  the  city's  cynosure, 
daughter  of  the  wealthiest  burgess,  for  his  wife.  The 
purity  of  his  love  and  the  perfection  of  his  courage 
are  shown  to  be  interdependent,  and  the  method 
by  which  his  bride  is  won  introduces  the  "  second 
subject."  Farina  accompanies  Monk  Gregory,  who  has 
an  appointment  with  the  Devil,  to  the  summit  of  the 
Drachenfels.  With  the  youth  as  his  witness,  Gregory 
encounters  the  Evil  One.  The  Devil,  feigning  the 
monk  his  conqueror,  disappears  to  the  nether  regions 
by  way  of  Cologne.  But  the  smell  of  his  exit  makes 
the  city  uninhabitable ;  and  the  Kaiser,  who  is  en- 
camped outside,  cannot  come  into  it.  Farina  is  a 
Chemist,  and  he  escorts  the  Kaiser,  conquers  the 
stench  with  the  "  Eau  de  Cologne "  he  has  invented, 
and  receives  his  bride  in  reward. 

As  to  Margarita's  willingness  there  has  for  long  been 
no  question.  For  she  is  of  the  order  of  beings  that 
Meredith  loves  ;  a  girl  with  many  boy-like  characteris- 
tics, who  uses  her  eyes  and  her  brain  for  the  purpose  of 
finding  realities  and  living  in  the  light  of  them.  The 
key  to  her  character  is  given  in  her  reply  to  Lisbeth's 
warnings  against  her  natural  depravity,  "  Where  I  see 
no  harm,  Aunty,  I  shall  think  the  good  God  is,  and 
where  I  see  there's  harm,  I  shall  think  Satan  lurks." 
Siegfried  is  her  hero ;  courage  and  tenderness  are  the 
qualities  she  asks  in  a  lover,  and  as  soon  as  she  finds 


FARINA  31 

them  in  Farina,  she  loves  him  directly,  openly,  and 
with  her  whole  heart.  We  see  her  first  in  the  vineyards, 
dressed  in  a  short,  blue  gown  with  a  scarlet  bodice ;  her 
hair  like  ripe  corn,  and  in  it  a  saffron  crocus  stuck  bell 
downwards.  Her  blue  eyes  smile  frankly,  but  some- 
thing as  yet  unstirred  is  in  their  depths — a  sleeping 
dragon — which  because  Margarita  "has  not  dallied  with 
heroes  in  dreams"  will  spring  up  at  need,  will  handle  a 
sword  in  the  den  of  the  robbers,  and  face  death  un- 
afraid. Wedded  to  her,  Farina,  when  warehouses  of 
false  Farinas  displaying  flasks  like  his  own  rise  round 
him  on  all  hands,  is  able  to  laugh  at  "the  back-blows  of 
Sathanas."  "  Fame  and  fortune,"  he  mused,  "  come 
from  man  and  the  world.  Love  is  from  heaven.  We 
may  be  worthy  and  lose  the  first.  We  lose  not  love 
unless  unworthy.  Would  ye  know  the  true  Farina? 
Look  for  him  who  walks  under  the  seal  of  bliss ;  whose 
darling  is  for  ever  his  young,  sweet  bride,  leading  him 
from  snares,  priming  his  soul  with  celestial  freshness. 
There  is  no  hypocrisy  can  ape  that  aspect." 

Though  the  tale — included  now  in  Chloe  and  other 
Stories — is  short,  it  contains  many  of  the  elements  of 
Meredith's  later  work  and  amply  enough  portrays  his 
special  faculty  for  uniting  pageant  and  problem  in  the 
reading  of  life.  Its  chief  interest  for  us  lies  in  the  ex- 
tent to  which  it  takes  on  the  clothing  we  recognise  to- 
day as  characteristic  of  Meredith's  thought,  though  to 
say  this  is  not  to  neglect  the  fact  that  it  possesses  a 
rarity  and  value  of  its  own.  The  frank  contrast 
between  the  monk,  who  by  renouncing  the  joy  of  life 
fell  a  prey  to  spiritual  pride  and  its  destruction,  and 
Farina,  who  by  his  fearless  welcome  of  all  life  gave, 
achieved  the  very  conquest  claimed  by  the  ascetic,  is 
the  keynote  of  the  whole. 

So  far  Meredith's  essays  in  fiction  consist  of  two  ex- 


32  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

periments,  two  imitations  of  definite  styles  of  romance. 
Neither  may  appeal  to  our  taste ;  we  may  object  to 
both  of  his  models  ;  but  we  can  hardly  question  his  skill 
as  a  copyist,  or  refuse  to  admit  that  his  dramas  have  a 
vitality  unobscured  by  the  mannerisms  in  which  they 
are  clothed.  It  is  evident,  too,  that  he  has  views  of  his 
own  to  express ;  views  serious,  though  not  always 
stated  with  the  obvious  seriousness  the  Englishman  is 
apt  to  demand.  Social  reformation,  for  instance,  is  typi- 
fied by  a  shave ;  "  thwacking "  epitomises  the  long 
spiritual  discipline  the  reformer  has  to  undergo ;  and 
the  natural  fragrance  of  a  life  that  overcomes  the 
ascetic's  slur  upon  humanity  is  symbolised  by  the  in- 
vention of  Eau  de  Cologne.  He  has  shown  unusual 
agility  in  catching  the  idioms  of  alien  languages ;  he  is, 
we  suspect,  training  himself  to  speak  in  his  own.  Yet 
at  the  outset,  the  Wagging  Tongue1  and  "the  spell  that 
tieth  every  faculty  except  the  tongue,  the  spell  of  vain 
longing,"  have  been  held  up  to  our  scorn.  He  has  not 
yet  found  his  voice ;  but  when  he  speaks,  he  will,  we 
feel,  speak  to  the  purpose. 

1  "  The  Story  of  Khilpil  the  Builder."     Shaving  of  Shagpat. 


CHAPTER   IV 
THE   ORDEAL   OF   RICHARD    FEVEREL 

THIS,  the  first  of  George  Meredith's  novels,  ap- 
peared in  1859,  two  years  after  Farina,  and  three 
from  the  Shaving  of  Shagpat.  There  is  no  affectation  of 
frivolity,  no  cloaking  of  earnestness  here ;  The  Ordeal 
of  Richard  Feverel  is  red-hot  from  the  first  page  to  the 
last.  It  does  not  contain  the  noblest  of  Meredith's 
creations,  and  the  emotional  pitch  is  not  so  evenly  sus- 
tained as  in  Sandra  Belloni,  but  in  its  fusion  of  intellect 
and  feeling  it  is  perhaps  the  greatest  of  his  works.  The 
thought  is  vitally  related  to  the  subject,  and  in  com- 
parison with  most  of  Meredith's  novels,  the  book  is 
free  from  side  issues  and  intellectual  excursions.  The 
Feverels  are  brilliant,  and  in  their  mouths  aphorisms 
are  not  out  of  place.  Sir  Austin  Feverel,  moreover,  is 
just  the  kind  of  person  who  would  commit  his  reflections 
to  paper  and  publisher  ;  and,  in  availing  himself  of  this 
likelihood,  Meredith  has  obtained  his  background  of 
disquisition  and  comment  with  unusual  adroitness. 
"Who  rises  from  Prayer  a  better  man,  his  prayer  is 
answered."  "  When  we  know  ourselves  fools,  we  are 
already  something  better."  "  For  this  reason  so  many 
fall  from  God  who  have  attained  to  Him;  that  they  cling 
to  Him  with  their  Weakness,  not  with  their  Strength." 
"Nature  is  not  all  dust,  but  a  living  portion  of  the 
spheres.     In  aspiration  it  is  our  error  to  despise  her, 

d  33 


34  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

forgetting  that  through  Nature  only  can  we  ascend." 
Those  who  are  familiar  with  Meredith's  thought  through 
his  subsequent  works  recognise  these  sayings  as  ex- 
pressions of  his  most  individual  conviction,  but  in 
Richard  Fever  el  they  appeared  woven  into  the  fabric  of 
the  plot  and  related  to  the  character  of  Sir  Austin. 

I  find  it  impossible  to  agree  with  Mr.  Le  Gallienne  in 
his  preference  for  Richard  Feverel  in  its  earliest  form. 
Little  of  value  has  disappeared  from  the  later  editions, 
and  the  dramatic  intensity  of  the  work  is  greatly 
enhanced  by  the  pruning  of  exuberant  details.  Far 
from  being  regrettable,  those  alterations  appear  to  me 
the  best  of  witnesses  to  Meredith's  power  of  self- 
criticism.1  Detailed  accounts  of  the  many  lady  admirers 
of  "  The  Pilgrim's  Scrip,"  Sir  Austin's  progenitors,  Sir 
Miles  Papworth's  convictions  and  appearance,  even 
Richard's  babyhood  and  earliest  birthdays,  and  Ripton 
Thompson's  invitation  to  Raynham  and  arrival  there, 
were  surely  beneath  the  dignity  of  the  book.  But  to 
say  this  is  not  of  course  to  deny  value  to  the  existence 
of  the  original  edition  ;  the  only  question  is  as  to  the 
nature  of  that  value.  Many  of  us  feel  that  we  could 
spare  little  that  Meredith  has  given  ;  but,  over  and  above 
this  consideration,  the  original  edition  of  the  story  is 
valuable  in  familiarising  us  with  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
author's  thought  in  reference  to  some  of  his  characters. 
They  have  gained,  become  more  vital  and  unified  in 
later  presentment ;  but,  granting  that  fact,  we  may  yet, 
in  the  case  of  Sir  Austin  at  least,  glean  a  good  deal 
from  the  earlier  and  less  vigorous  portrait.  We  hear 
more  of  his   popularity  before  the  date  of  his  lady's 

1  The  history  of  the  poem  In  the  Woods  affords  another  striking 
example  of  this  power.  It  appeared  in  The  Fortnightly  for  August,  1870, 
and  consisted  of  nine  stanzas.  Of  these  nine,  three  only,  now  known  as 
Whimper  of  Sympathy,  Woodland  Peace,  and  Dirge  in  Woods  have  been 
reprinted,  and  these  are  amended  remarkably. 


ORDEAL   OF    RICHARD   FEVEREL      35 

defection  ;  we  see  him  from  that  time,  when  Richard  is 
four  years  of  age,  fussy  and  over-anxious,  even  super- 
stitious  in   his   guardianship ;    and    we   realise   a   fact 
which,  though  really  completely  stated  in  subsequent 
editions,  may  be  missed  by  readers  unfamiliar  with  the 
general  trend  of  Meredith's  thought — that  the  baronet's 
calamity,  instead  of  making  a  philosopher  of  him  as  he 
supposed,  had  led  him  to  dwell  on  "  The  Ordeal "  of  the 
Feverels,  and  regard  his  experience  as  unique.     Here 
too  we  have  the  explanation  of  what  to  many  of  us  was 
puzzling — how  Sir  Austin,  with  his  instinct  for  noble- 
ness, could  have  elected  Adrian,  rather  than  Austin,  as 
Richard's  preceptor.    "Austin  had  offended  against  the 
Baronet's  main  crotchet,  that  to  ally  oneself  randomly 
was  to  be  guilty  of  a  crime  before  Heaven  greater  than 
the  offence  it  sought  to  extinguish."1     Later  editions 
merely  inform  us  that  Austin  Wentworth  does  not  live 
with   his   wife,  and    that   he  is  reproached    for   being 
"  barren  to  posterity  while  knaves  are  propagating" ;  but 
in  this,  the  earliest,  his  uncle's  attitude  is  presented  with 
considerably  greater  explicitness.    "  Think,  Madam,"  the 
baronet  says  to  Lady  Blandish,  "  think  that  he,  a  young 
man  of  excellent  qualities,  has  madly  disinherited  his 
future.    I  do  not  forgive  him.    The  nobler  he,  the  worse 
his  folly.    I  do  not  forgive  him."    Benson's  curious  and 
somewhat  offensive  position   in   the  household   is  ex- 
plained also,  and  on  similar  grounds ;  the  butler  had 
been  the  victim   of  a   connubial   misfortune,  and   was 
known  to  share  Sir  Austin's  view  of  women.     In  short, 
the  degree  of  emphasis  laid  on  this  particular  subject  in 
the  first  edition  of  the  book  is  tasteless,  and  in  later  life 
Meredith  has  been  quick  to  realise  the  fact.     To  us  it 
is  valuable  only  as  bringing  out  the   truth   that   Sir 
Austin,  while  he  supposes  himself  detached  and  judicial, 

1  1859  Edition.     Vol.  i,  page  54. 


36  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

in  reality  is  singularly  warped  by  his  suffering.  His 
"  Pilgrim's  Scrip "  is  a  mine  of  much  wisdom,  and 
written,  we  are  told,  "  from  the  Triad  which  gives 
a  healthy  utterance  to  wisdom — reflection,  feeling,  and 
experience,"  but  pride  and  self-pity  prevent  him  from 
turning  his  knowledge  to  account.  "  The  direct  applica- 
tion of  an  aphorism,"  we  are  told,  "  was  unpopular  at 
Raynham."  Yet,  in  spite  of  his  System,  Sir  Austin  is 
by  no  means  a  fool ;  Meredith  describes  him,  at  the 
crucial  moment  of  his  relationship  to  Richard,  as  "  a 
fine  mind,  and  a  fine  heart,  at  the  bounds  of  a  nature 
not  great."  That  he  is  cognizant  of  his  own  total  lack 
of  humour  is  stated  explicitly,  and  for  such  cogni- 
zance real  intellect  is  necessary ;  a  belief  in  their  per- 
ception of  the  comic  being  one  of  the  most  deeply 
rooted  prejudices  of  unimaginative  minds.  It  is  ad- 
mirable also  to  keep  a  brave  face  to  the  world — when 
one  is  injured  to  refuse  to  whimper — and  in  this  task 
Sir  Austin  is  only  too  successful.  Above  the  common 
run  of  men  in  character,  he  emerges  triumphant  from 
the  common  testings  of  conduct ;  he  is  cruelly  deceived, 
but  deception  does  not  make  him  wrathful  or  vindictive. 
In  the  normal  relations  of  life  his  bearing  is  blameless, 
but  he  aspires  to  something  greater  than  these,  and,  in 
aspiring,  encounters  his  Ordeal.  He  attempts  to  play 
Providence  to  Richard,  and  to  stand  to  Lady  Blandish 
for  wisdom  incarnate.  His  early  misfortune  has  taught 
him  something  of  mankind,  but  little  or  nothing  of 
himself.  When  Richard  breaks  from  his  control,  he 
questions,  not  the  nature  of  that  control,  but  the  sound- 
ness of  humanity ;  when  Lady  Blandish  pleads  for 
Richard's  forgiveness  he  imagines  himself  great-minded 
in  the  maintenance  of  a  rigid  superiority.  "By  the 
springs  of  Richard's  future,  his  father  sat  :  and  the 
devil  said  to  him :  '  Only  be  quiet :  do  nothing :  reso- 


ORDEAL   OF    RICHARD    FEVEREL      37 

lutely  do  nothing :  your  object  now  is  to  keep  a  brave 
face  to  the  world,  so  that  all  may  know  you  superior  to 
this  human  nature  that  has  deceived  you.'  Further  he 
whispered,  '  And  your  System — if  you  would  be  brave 
to  the  world,  have  courage  to  cast  the  dream  of  it  out 
of  you  :  relinquish  an  impossible  project  ;  see  it  as  it  is 
— dead  :  too  good  for  men  ! '  '  Ay ! '  muttered  the 
baronet, '  all  who  would  save  them  perish  on  the  Cross  ! '" 
"  How,"  comments  Sir  Austin's  creator,  "  are  we  to 
distinguish  the  dark  chief  of  the  Manichaeans  when  he 
talks  our  own  thoughts  to  us  ? "  Chiefly,  perhaps,  by 
this  tendency  to  lay  the  blame  for  our  peculiar  griefs  on 
humanity's  shortcomings  ;  above  all,  by  any  inclination 
to  seek  great  parallels  for  our  private  experiences,  and 
in  debasing  words  of  high  and  holy  association,  betray 
our  ignorance  of  spiritual  values. 

"  Expediency  is  man's  wisdom,  doing  right  is  God's." 
On  this  truth,  apprehended  intellectually  by  Sir  Austin, 
his  nephew  Austin  Wentworth  intuitively  acts.  We 
hear  of  him  as  socially  condemned,  not  for  the  sin  of  his 
youth  but  for  its  atonement — " '  Married  his  mother's 
housemaid/  whispered  Mrs.  Doria," — and  as  a  friend  of 
the  poor.  But  we  first  see  him  in  his  interview  with 
Tom  Bakewell  and  his  subsequent  conversations  with 
Richard.  Unlike  the  rest  of  the  Feverels,  he  is  not 
brilliant  or  even  quick-witted.  He  avoids  preaching  at 
Richard  ;  but  the  avoidance  is  instinctive  rather  than 
reasoned  ;  for  he  falls  into  the  intellectually  equivalent 
error  of  attempting  to  bring  realities  home  to  the  boy 
by  picturing  to  him  Tom  Bakewell's  discomfort  in  prison. 
Richard's  sense  of  the  ludicrous  is  infinitely  keener  than 
Austin's,  and  reminders  of  poor  Tom's  loutishness  do 
not  help  on  the  argument.  Nevertheless,  Austin's  pur- 
pose is  achieved.  Richard  sets  forth  in  his  company  to 
make  confession  to  the  farmer,  and  the  scene  is  typical 


38  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

of  the  way  in  which  Austin  Wentworth's  single-minded- 
ness  serves  to  brush  brain-spun  obstacles  like  cobwebs 
from  his  path.  Lucy's  admirers,  half-hearted  and  whole- 
hearted alike,  hesitate  and  manoeuvre  for  months  as 
to  how  she  is  to  be  brought  into  her  father-in-law's 
presence  ;  Austin  returns  from  five  years'  absence  in  the 
tropics  to  learn  Lucy's  address  and  the  outline  of  her 
story  from  a  chance  meeting  with  Adrian  in  Piccadilly, 
and  by  nightfall  she  and  her  child  are  with  him  at 
Raynham.  "  I  have  brought  Richard's  wife,  sir,"  with  a 
joking  question  as  to  his  own  exact  relationship  to  the 
baby,  serve  as  their  introduction  ;  and  when  the  new- 
comers are  accepted  and  borne  off  to  sleeping-apart- 
ments, "  A  person  you  take  to  at  once "  is  his  only 
rejoinder  to  the  Baronet's  favourable  comment  on 
Lucy's  appearance.  It  is  he  who  brings  Bessie  Berry's 
long-truant  husband  to  her  feet.  It  is  his  presence  Lady 
Blandish  entreats  when  Lucy  lies  dead  in  the  French 
cabaret ;  the  tragedy  has  darkened  beyond  human  aid, 
but  she  feels  that  Austin's  presence  may  rekindle  charity 
and  faith  in  its  spectators.  He  moves  in  and  out  of  the 
foreground  as  an  influence  none  the  less  potent  for  his 
complete  lack  of  assumption ;  where  Austin  is,  we  feel 
all  will  go  well,  just  as  where  Adrian  is  all  will  go  wrong. 
The  fact  that  his  actual  appearances  are  short  and 
infrequent  would  be  more  regrettable  were  it  not  for  our 
consciousness  that  he  survives  as  a  permanent  ideal  in 
the  mind  of  his  author.  We  find  ourselves  moved  to 
particular  sympathy  with  Bessie  Berry's  parting  re- 
minder to  Lucy  on  that  strange  night  of  their  arrival 
at  Raynham  :  "  And  now  let  us  pray  blessings  on  that 
simple-speaking  gentleman  who  does  so  much  'cause  he 
says  so  little,"  but  we  feel  that  the  actual  terms  of  the 
description  cover  not  Austin  Wentworth  alone,  but  a 
whole  family  of  Meredith's  masculine  characters. 


ORDEAL   OF    RICHARD    FEVEREL      39 

It  is,  as  Mr.  Le  Gallienne  has  pointed  out,  by  the 
very  strangest  of  mistakes  that  Adrian  Harley  has  been 
confused  with  Meredith's  ideal  and  even  with  himself. 
It  is  indeed  a  cardinal  point  of  his  teaching  that  intellect 
is  the  true  guide  of  the  spiritual  man,  and  that  feeling, 
however  sweet  and  pure  it  may  be,  is  an  insufficient 
director  of  conduct.  But  in  all  such  teaching  it  is  need- 
ful to  make  certain  assumptions,  and  that  the  capacity 
for  emotion  is  an  essential  of  human  equipment  is  a  fact 
on  which  he  has  supposed  it  needless  to  insist.  Adrian 
is  an  excellent  piece  of  characterisation ;  he  is  the 
wittiest  person  in  the  book,  and  all  the  Feverels  are 
witty.  To  Austin's  plea  of  urgency  when  Richard  is 
implicated  in  the  rick-burning,  "  The  boy's  fate  is  being 
decided  now,"  he  yawns  out  the  retort,  "  So  is  every- 
body's, my  dear  Austin,"  and  to  Richard's  repeated 
assertions  that  Lucy  had  done  all  in  her  power  to  put 
off  their  marriage,  he  rejoins,  "  Not  all !  not  all.  She 
could  have  shaved  her  head  for  instance."  But  in 
spite  of  Adrian's  cleverness,  Meredith  allows  us  no 
manner  of  doubt  as  to  his  baseness  of  nature.  "  Adrian 
Harley,"  he  tells  us, "  had  mastered  his  philosophy  at  the 
early  age  of  one-and-twenty.  Many  would  be  glad  to 
say  the  same  at  that  age  twice-told  ;  they  carry  in  their 
breasts  a  burden  with  which  Adrian's  was  not  loaded. 
Mrs.  Doria  was  nearly  right  about  his  heart.  A  singular 
mishap  (at  his  birth,  possibly,  or  before  it)  had  unseated 
that  organ  and  shaken  it  down  to  his  stomach."  Lucy, 
when  his  name  is  mentioned,  inquires  whether  he  is 
good.  "  Good  ?  "  says  Richard.  "  He's  very  fond  of 
eating,  that's  all  I  know  about  Adrian."  He  is  in  the 
habit  of  making  jokes  "  delicately  not  decent,  though  so 
delicately  so  that  it  was  not  decent  to  perceive  it."  He 
is  a  person  to  be  reckoned  with  on  account  of  his  quick- 
wittedness  ;  but  he  is  detestable,  and  it  would  hardly  be 


40  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

possible  for  him  to  be  more  heartily  detested  than  he  is 
by  his  author. 

Richard's  cousin  Clare  is  one  of  the  least  satis- 
factory features  of  the  book  ;  her  death  is  intended  to 
heighten  the  tragedy,  but  in  effect  it  is  not  convincing. 
We  are  told  in  connection  with  Richard's  home-coming 
after  his  long  separation  from  his  friends  that  the  duel 
to  take  place  on  the  morrow  made  the  worth  of  each 
human  relationship  clear  to  him,  "the  thought  of  the 
leaden  bullet  dispersed  all  unrealities."  This,  we  feel, 
is  as  it  should  be,  and  as  it  actually  is.  But  it  cuts  at 
the  root  of  the  story  of  Clare.  She  has  decided  to  die ; 
she  has  even  taken  the  potion  ;  yet  she  writes  on,  in  her 
diary,  of  love  and  longing  for  Richard,  writes  till 
bodily  torment  is  revealed  in  the  penmanship,  and  till 
the  friends  into  whose  hands  the  pocket-book  falls  must 
be  convinced  of  her  suicide.  Even  allowing  for  a  strong 
vein  of  morbidity,  this  is  not  life  as  we  know  it.  Clare 
with  her  unassuming  generous  nature  would  probably 
not  have  written  so  at  all ;  but,  if  she  had,  it  is  certain 
that,  in  the  presence  of  death,  she  would  have  destroyed, 
she  would  not  have  prolonged  her  record.  The  diarist's 
is  the  action  not  of  the  person  who  commits  suicide 
but  of  the  person  who  talks  of  committing  it. 

The  first  edition  of  The  Ordeal  contained,  as  has  been 
said,  a  good  deal  that  was  tasteless  ;  but  what  is  remark- 
able to  note  is  that  the  portions,  now  so  wisely  discarded, 
concerned  only  subsidiary  matters.  The  infantine 
Richard,  Mrs.  Doria,  Sir  Austin's  admirers,  Benson, 
Ripton  Thompson,  the  old  doctor,  and  Mrs.  Grandison, 
were  the  characters  affected.  The  heart  of  the  tale,  its 
heights  and  depths,  were  all  as  we  now  know  them. 
Nothing  has  been  taken  from  the  scene  of  Richard's 
meeting  with  Lucy,  and  nothing  has  been  added  to  it. 
The  river  that  opened  out  to  the  founts  of  the  world 


ORDEAL  OF   RICHARD   FEVEREL     41 

was  the  same  as  it  is  now,  magical  with  the  genuine 
magic  of  dawn.  Gleam  of  water  and  earth,  glint  of 
heron  and  kingfisher,  song  of  sky-lark  and  blackbird, 
with  scent  of  the  meadows — these  things  were  caught, 
exquisite  and  unmarred,  from  the  first.  The  Idyll  of 
young  Love,  with  its  background  of  midsummer  flowers, 
came  from  the  hand  of  the  author  perfect  as  now. 
"  Golden  lie  the  meadows  :  golden  run  the  streams  ;  red 
gold  is  on  the  pine-stems.  The  sun  is  coming  down  to 
earth,  and  walks  the  fields  and  the  waters.  The  sun  is 
coming  down  to  earth,  and  the  fields  and  the  waters 
shout  to  him  golden  shouts.  He  comes,  and  his  heralds 
run  before  him,  and  touch  the  leaves  of  oaks,  and  planes 
and  beeches  lucid  green,  and  the  pine-stems  redder 
gold  ;  leaving  brightest  foot-prints  upon  thickly-weeded 
banks,  where  the  foxglove's  last  upper-bells  incline,  and 
bramble-shoots  wander  amid  moist  rich  herbage.  The 
plumes  of  the  woodland  are  alight ;  and  beyond  them 
over  the  open,  'tis  a  race  with  the  long-thrown  shadows  ; 
a  race  across  the  heath  and  up  the  hills,  till,  at  the 
farthest  bourne  of  mounted  eastern  cloud,  the  heralds 
of  the  sun  lay  rosy  fingers,  and  rest.  Sweet  are  the  shy 
recesses  of  the  woodland.  The  ray  treads  softly  there. 
A  film  athwart  the  pathway  quivers,  many-hued,  against 
purple  shade  fragrant  with  warm  pines,  deep  moss-beds, 
feathery  ferns.  The  little  brown  squirrel  drops  tail  and 
leaps ;  the  inmost  bird  is  startled  to  a  chance  tuneless 
note.     From  silence  unto  silence  things  move." 

"  With  its  background,"  did  I  say  ?  The  phrase  is 
strangely  superficial.  Speech  or  action  of  the  lovers 
occupies  the  least  part  of  the  pages  in  which  the 
marvel  of  their  love  is  revealed.  The  greater  part  is 
devoted  to  the  pageant  of  earth,  the  glorious  proces- 
sion of  the  hours.  It  is  customary  to  believe  that 
whatever  else  Meredith  may  have  done  or  left  undone, 


42  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

he  has  accomplished  in  The  Egoist  that  which  he  came 
to  do.  But  that  book,  brilliant  as  it  is,  appears  hardly 
more  than  a  sketch — a  study  in  temperaments — when 
compared  with  the  full-blooded,  passionate  wealth  of 
some  of  his  other  works.  The  intellectual  subtleties, 
of  which  he  is  so  renowned  a  master,  are  his  snare ; 
they  lead  him  constantly  into  error  in  estimation  and 
treatment  of  detail.  For  the  genius  of  his  work  lies 
not  in  its  artistic  perfection,  nor  even  in  its  intellectual 
subtlety,  but  rather  in  its  greatness  of  original  outline 
and  conception.  Richard  Feverel,  Sandra  Belloni,  and 
Harry  Richmond  are  not  artistically  perfected,  they 
contain  subsidiary  characters  and  events  that  are  quite 
out  of  drawing.  Classic  they  are,  not  in  their  form — 
that,  compared  with  Turgenev's  for  instance,  is  im- 
mature and  uncouth — but  by  virtue  of  their  power. 
The  modern  novelist's  gift  of  manipulation,  though 
exercised  only  upon  puppets,  is  not  despicable  ;  but  we 
feel  in  Lucy  and  Sandra  and  Roy,  that  the  dust  of 
humanity  has  been  breathed  on  by  a  creator.  Meredith 
views  the  elemental  forces  at  the  roots  of  our  being  in 
the  light  of  a  great  poetic  conception  of  life  and  its 
background.  His  dramas  are  not  episodes  merely  ; 
they  include  a  horizon,  they  allow  for  the  unuttered 
part  of  our  speech  ;  and  this  is  probably  the  truth  that 
has  been  aimed  at  in  the  comparison  of  his  works  with 
Shakespeare's.  The  flame  of  sunrise  and  sunset  mingles 
inextricably  with  the  love-making  of  Richard  and 
Lucy.  Meredith  has  given  us  later  and  more  intellectual 
statements  of  kinship  between  Earth  and  her  children  ; 
but  here  is  its  spontaneous  artistic  expression,  broad  in 
appeal  because  grounded  in  the  commonest  human  ex- 
perience— an  expression  moreover  of  which  prose  in  no 
other  hands  has  proved  itself  capable.  "  The  tide  of 
colour  has  ebbed  from  the  upper  sky.     In  the  west  the 


ORDEAL   OF   RICHARD    FEVEREL      43 

sea  of  sunken  fire  draws  back ;  and  the  stars  leap  forth, 
and  tremble,  and  retire  before  the  advancing  moon, 
who  slips  the  silver  train  of  cloud  from  her  shoulders, 
and,  with  her  foot  upon  the  pine-tops  surveys  heaven. 
'Lucy,  did  you  never  dream  of  meeting  me?'  'O 
Richard  !  yes ;  for  I  remembered  you.'  '  Lucy !  and 
did  you  pray  that  we  might  meet  ? '  'I  did  ! '  Young 
as  when  she  looked  upon  the  lovers  in  Paradise,  the 
fair  Immortal  journeys  onward.  Fronting  her,  it  is 
not  night  but  veiled  day.  Full  half  the  sky  is  flushed. 
Not  darkness  ;  not  day  :  but  the  nuptials  of  the  two. 
1  My  own  !  my  own  for  ever  !  You  are  pledged  to  me  ? 
Whisper  ! '  He  hears  the  delicious  music.  '  And  you 
are  mine  ? '  A  soft  beam  travels  to  the  fern-covert 
under  the  pine-wood  where  they  sit,  and  for  answer  he 
has  her  eyes  :  turned  to  him  an  instant,  timidly  flutter- 
ing over  the  depths  of  his,  and  downcast ;  for  through 
her  eyes  her  soul  is  naked  to  him.  '  Lucy !  my  bride ! 
my  life ! '  The  night-jar  spins  his  dark  monotony  on 
the  branch  of  the  pine.  The  soft  beam  travels  round 
them  and  listens  to  their  hearts." 

When  we  consider  the  age  of  its  author,  this  maturity 
of  workmanship  seems  striking  enough,  and  no  less  so 
in  the  chapter  entitled  "  Nursing  the  Devil,"  psychologi- 
cally one  of  the  finest  in  the  book.  But  on  the  tragic 
heights  of  the  story  the  art  is  equally  supreme ;  above 
all  in  Richard's  wandering,  when  he  has  just  learned  of 
his  fatherhood,  and  in  that  great  scene  where  the  high- 
water  mark  of  novelistic  passion  is  reached — his  last 
meeting  and  parting  with  Lucy.  Richard,  when  Austin 
arrives  and  alludes  to  the  birth  of  his  boy,  is  in  Nassau 
with  Lady  Judith  Felle,  his  sentimentalist  friend.  The 
news  scatters  his  vapours  and  brings  him  to  life.  He 
starts  out  by  himself  when  a  storm  is  impending ;  and 
mountain  and  forest,  breathless  silence,  and  rush  and 


44  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

thunder  of  tempest,  serve  as  ministers  and  accompani- 
ments to  his  awakening  spirit.  "  A  father  ...  a  child." 
In  spite  of  his  anguished  repentance,  alone  there  amid 
the  grandeurs  and  mysteries  of  storm,  he,  the  sole 
representative  of  humanity,  feels  himself  greater  than 
they.  In  conflict  with  the  elements  "  his  spirit  rose, 
and  marched,  and  exulted,  let  it  be  glory,  let  it  be  ruin  ! 
Lower  down  the  lightened  abysses  of  air  rolled  the 
wrathful  crash :  then  white  thrusts  of  light  were  darted 
from  the  sky,  and  great  curving  ferns,  seen  steadfast  in 
pallor  a  second,  were  supernaturally  agitated,  and  van- 
ished. Then  a  shrill  song  roused  in  the  leaves  and  the 
herbage.  Prolonged  and  louder  it  sounded,  as  deeper 
and  heavier  the  deluge  pressed.  A  mighty  force  of 
water  satisfied  the  desire  of  the  earth.  Even  in  this, 
drenched  as  he  was  by  the  first  outpouring,  Richard  had 
a  savage  pleasure.  Keeping  in  motion  he  was  scarcely 
conscious  of  the  wet,  and  the  grateful  breath  of  the 
weeds  was  refreshing.  Suddenly  he  stopped  short,  lift- 
ing a  curious  nostril.  He  fancied  he  smelt  meadow- 
sweet ;  he  had  never  seen  the  flower  in  Rhineland — 
never  thought  of  it ;  and  it  would  hardly  be  met  with 
in  a  forest.  He  was  sure  he  smelt  it  fresh  in  dews. 
His  little  companion  wagged  a  miserable  wet  tail  some 
way  in  advance.  He  went  on  slowly,  thinking  in- 
distinctly. After  two  or  three  steps  he  stooped  and 
stretched  out  his  hand  to  feel  for  the  flower,  having,  he 
knew  not  why,  a  strong  wish  to  verify  its  growth  there. 
Groping  about,  his  hand  encountered  something  warm 
that  started  at  his  touch,  and  he,  with  the  instinct  we 
have,  seized  it,  and  lifted  it  to  look  at  it.  The  creature 
was  very  small,  evidently  quite  young.  Richard's  eyes, 
now  accustomed  to  the  darkness,  were  able  to  discern 
it  for  what  it  was,  a  tiny  leveret,  and  he  supposed  that 
the  dog  had  probably  frightened  its  dam  just  before  he 


ORDEAL   OF    RICHARD    FEVEREL      45 

found  it.  He  put  the  little  thing  on  one  hand  in  his 
breast,  and  stepped  out  rapidly  as  before.  The  rain 
was  now  steady ;  from  every  tree  a  fountain  poured. 
So  cool  and  easy  had  his  mind  become  that  he  was 
speculating  on  what  kind  of  shelter  the  birds  could 
find,  and  how  the  butterflies  and  moths  saved  their 
coloured  wings  from  washing.  Folded  close  they  might 
hang  under  a  leaf,  he  thought.  Lovingly  he  looked 
into  the  dripping  darkness  of  the  coverts  on  each  side, 
as  one  of  their  children.  Then  he  was  musing  on  a 
strange  sensation  he  experienced.  It  ran  up  one  arm 
with  an  indescribable  thrill,  but  communicated  nothing 
to  his  heart.  It  was  purely  physical,  ceased  for  a  time, 
and  recommenced,  till  he  had  it  all  through  his  blood, 
wonderfully  thrilling.  He  grew  aware  that  the  little 
thing  he  carried  in  his  breast  was  licking  his  hand 
there.  The  small  rough  tongue  going  over  and  over 
the  palm  of  his  hand  produced  this  strange  sensation 
he  felt.  Now  that  he  knew  the  cause,  the  marvel 
ended  ;  but  now  that  he  knew  the  cause,  his  heart  was 
touched  and  made  more  of  it.  The  gentle  scraping 
continued  without  intermission  as  on  he  walked.  What 
did  it  say  to  him  ?  Human  tongue  could  not  have  said 
so  much  just  then.  A  pale  grey  light  in  the  skirts  of 
the  flying  tempest  displayed  the  dawn.  Richard  was 
walking  hurriedly.  The  green  drenched  weeds  lay  all 
about  in  his  path,  bent  thick,  and  the  forest  drooped 
glimmeringly.  Impelled  as  a  man  who  feels  a  revelation 
mounting  obscurely  to  his  brain,  Richard  was  passing 
one  of  those  little  forest-chapels,  hung  with  votive 
wreaths,  where  the  peasant  halts  to  kneel  and  pray. 
Cold,  still,  in  the  twilight  it  stood,  raindrops  pattering 
round  it.  He  looked  within,  and  saw  the  Virgin  holding 
her  Child.  He  moved  by.  But  not  many  steps  had 
he   gone  ere   his   strength  went   out  of  him,  and    he 


46  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

shuddered.  What  was  it  ?  He  asked  not.  He  was  in 
other  hands.  Vivid  as  lightning  the  Spirit  of  Life 
illumined  him.  He  felt  in  his  heart  the  cry  of  his 
child,  his  darling's  touch.  With  shut  eyes  he  saw  them 
both.  They  drew  him  from  the  depths  ;  they  led  him 
a  blind  and  tottering  man.  And  as  they  led  him  he 
had  a  sense  of  purification  so  sweet  he  shuddered  again 
and  again.  When  he  looked  out  from  his  trance  on 
the  breathing  world,  the  small  birds  hopped  and 
chirped  ;  warm  fresh  sunlight  was  over  all  the  hills. 
He  was  on  the  edge  of  the  forest,  entering  a  plain 
clothed  with  ripe  corn  under  a  spacious  morning  sky." 

And  this  scene,  moving  though  it  be,  is  but  as  an 
antechamber  to  the  scene  where  Richard  has  returned  to 
his  wife,  the  scene  where  the  light  in  Lucy's  eyes  is  like 
the  light  on  a  moving  wave — changeful,  yet  constantly 
radiant — and  Richard,  again  and  again  asking  if  his 
confession  has  been  understood,  receives  one  answer 
only,  and  that  in  its  turn  no  answer  but  a  question  : 
"  '  But  you  love  me?  Richard  !  My  husband  !  you  love 
me  ? '  '  Yes,  I  have  never  loved,  I  never  shall  love, 
woman  but  you.'  '  Darling !  Kiss  me.'  '  Have  you 
understood  what  I  have  told  you?'  '  Kiss  me,'  she  said. 
He  did  not  join  lips.  '  I  have  come  to  you  to-night  to 
ask  your  forgiveness.'  Her  answer  was  still :  '  Kiss  me.' 
1  Can  you  forgive  a  man  so  base  ? '  '  But  you  love  me, 
Richard  ? '  '  Yes  :  I  can  say  that  before  God.  I  love 
you,  and  I  have  betrayed  you,  and  am  unworthy  of 
you — not  worthy  to  touch  your  hand,  to  kneel  at  your 
feet,  to  breathe  the  same  air  with  you.'  Her  eyes  shone 
brilliantly.  'You  love  me!  you  love  me,  darling!'  And 
as  one  who  has  sailed  through  dark  fears  into  daylight, 
she  said,  '  My  husband  !  my  darling  !  you  will  never 
leave  me  ?  We  shall  never  be  parted  again  ? ' "  Of  the 
immediate  blighting  of  her  hopes,  of  the  terror  of  part- 


ORDEAL   OF   RICHARD   FEVEREL      47 

ing,  and  the  tragic  outcome  of  it  all,  nothing  can  here 
be  told.  These  events  belong  on  a  level  where  there  is 
no  place  for  language  that  is  not  inspired.  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  calls  the  parting  scene  between 
Richard  and  Lucy  the  strongest  written  in  English 
since  Shakespeare,  and,  though  we  may  question  the 
artistic  justifiability  of  events  so  cruelly  heart-rending, 
there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  grandeur  and  exalta- 
tion of  style  in  which  they  are  treated.  We  are 
reminded  of  the  comment  of  James  Thomson's  friend 
on  another  work  of  Meredith's :  "  Here  truly  are  words 
that  if  you  pricked  them  would  bleed." 

The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel  is  not  a  wholly  satis- 
factory book.  It  is  blotted  by  a  certain  kind  of  ugliness, 
already  suggested  in  connection  with  Clare,  and  exem- 
plified further  in  Ripton's  drunkenness  after  the  wedding, 
the  details  of  the  picnic  at  Richmond,  and  in  Mrs. 
Mountfalcon's  relation  to  Richard.  The  writer's  sense 
of  the  tragedy  of  human  existence  is  so  intense  that  it 
borders  on  cruelty ;  self-slain — his  characters  seem  not 
the  less  almost  hounded  to  ruin.  But  to  realise  the 
greatness  of  the  work,  we  have  only  to  reflect  how  in- 
tolerable the  tale  would  become,  shrunk  to  the  canvas 
of  an  inferior  writer.  We  may  not  think  the  story 
likeable,  but  we  cannot,  unless  we  are  idiots,  read  and 
be  blind  to  its  power.  In  view  of  this  the  first  of  his 
novels  we  may  question  whether  the  author's  outlook 
on  life  will  grow  broad-based  enough  to  support  his 
burden  of  feeling ;  but  we  know  him  already  as  a  poet 
and  not  a  transcriber — one  who  is  not  boxed  in  with 
his  characters  but  sees  them  against  a  great  background 
of  earth  and  of  air. 


CHAPTER  V 

EVAN    HARRINGTON   AND   THE    EMPTY 

PURSE 

PVAN  HARRINGTON,  which  made  its  appear- 
*^-"  ance  as  a  serial  in  Once  a  Week  for  the  year  i860, 
is  the  most  entertaining  of  Meredith's  stories.  That 
it  possesses  qualities  raising  it  high  above  the  level 
of  ordinary  serials  it  is  not  necessary  to  state ;  but, 
nevertheless,  it  more  nearly  makes  the  appeal  of  the 
popular  novel  than  does  any  other  of  Meredith's  works. 
Readers  unacquainted  with  his  writings  are  usually 
advised  to  begin  upon  Evan  Harrington,  and  the 
advice,  generally  speaking,  is  sound.  Yet  it  needs 
qualification  in  reference  to  the  reader's  nature  and 
aim  ;  for  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Evan  Harring- 
ton, though  easy  to  read  and  vastly  diverting,  cannot 
be  compared  with  Richard  Feverel,  for  instance,  in  the 
reward  it  offers.  It  is,  of  course,  tender  and  wise  in 
its  playfulness,  serious  enough  too  in  some  places,  but 
not  with  the  elemental  seriousness  and  wisdom  that 
The  Ordeal  inwinds  with  the  very  springs  of  our  being. 
And  the  root  of  the  difference  lies  in  the  subject. 
Tested  by  the  ordinary  standards  of  fiction  Evan 
Harrington  would  merely  be  noted  as  a  striking  success, 
but  in  relation  to  Meredith's  novels  it  is  necessary  to 
add  a  remark  as  to  the  level  on  which  that  success 
is  obtained — the  level  of  circumstance  and  incident. 
These  accidents  Meredith  of  course  moulds  to  his  ends; 

48 


EVAN    HARRINGTON  49 

he  emphasises  distinctions  in  social  position  to  reveal 
similarities  in  nature ;  but,  nevertheless,  his  realities, 
his  spiritual  situations,  depend  upon  these  distinctions 
for  their  interest  and  strength. 

The  story  is  of  a  tailor's  son,  who,  with  the  instincts 
and  upbringing  of  a  gentleman,  finds  himself,  at  his 
father's  decease,  bound  to  the  business  by  debt.  His 
mother — a  remarkable  woman  enough — comes  of  the 
professional  classes,  but  Evan  Harrington's  distinction 
descends  to  him  from  his  father.  When  the  story 
opens,  the  Great  Mel  is  no  longer  living ;  but  the 
whole  atmosphere  of  the  book  is  pervaded  by  his  pre- 
sence. Though  neither  his  vice  nor  his  virtue  are  on 
quite  so  heroic  a  scale,  Melchisedec  Harrington  is  Roy 
Richmond's  forerunner ;  they  meet  in  a  common  dis- 
dainfulness of  money  combined  with  requisition  of  the 
society  and  circumstance  it  brings  :  "  Mr.  Melchisedec 
had  been  at  once  the  sad  dog  of  Lymport  and  the 
pride  of  the  town.  He  was  a  tailor,  and  he  kept 
horses  ;  he  was  a  tailor,  and  he  had  gallant  adventures ; 
he  was  a  tailor,  and  he  shook  hands  with  his  customers. 
Finally,  he  was  a  tradesman,  and  he  was  never  known 
to  have  sent  in  a  bill."  Throughout  his  life  he  had 
managed  to  preserve  an  attitude  of  respect  to  his  wife ; 
but  the  task  had  been  difficult,  owing  to  her  sordid 
concern  with  matters  of  business  and  her  practice  of 
picking  up  the  pence  as  he  squandered  the  pounds. 
His  four  children — three  daughters  and  a  son — had 
been  removed  in  their  youth  from  the  taint  of  the  shop 
so  far  as  that  was  possible  ;  and,  when  the  story  begins, 
all  the  daughters  are  assured  of  social  position  by 
marriage,  while,  under  their  tutelage,  Evan,  a  lad  of 
seventeen,  waiting  an  army  commission,  spends  the 
hours  "  not  devoted  to  his  positive  profession — that  of 
gentleman — "  in  his  brother-in-law's  brewery,  "  toying 

E 


50  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

with  big  books  and  balances " ;  and  is  soon  to  be  in- 
veigled into  false  and  ludicrous  positions  by  his  sister 
Louisa,  who  has  obtained  a  Portuguese  Count  for  her 
husband. 

The  vulgarity  of  the  Countess  de  Saldar  de  Sancorvo 
— as  by  the  end  of  the  book  she  has  come  to  style  her- 
self— is  too  exaggerated  to  be  real ;  but  the  very  fact 
that  she  possesses  no  psychological  significance,  is  not 
indeed  a  credible  character,  leaves  us  free  to  ignore 
the  depths  of  her  coarseness  and  enjoy  her  endless 
manoeuvres  to  the  full.  To  these  we  are  first  intro- 
duced when,  in  company  with  Evan  and  her  husband, 
who  is  a  refugee,  she  attaches  herself  to  a  diplomatist's 
party  returning  from  Lisbon  to  the  metropolis.  The 
Government  sloop  is  boarded  in  the  Thames  by  Goren, 
a  tailor,  who  brings  Evan  news  of  his  father's  death. 
"  I'm  going  down  to-night,"  he  proclaims,  "  to  take  care 
of  the  shop.  He's  to  be  buried  in  his  old  uniform. 
You  had  better  come  with  me  by  the  night-coach, 
if  you  would  see  the  last  of  him,  young  man."  The 
Countess  is  sincerely  affected,  but  the  word  "  shop " 
may  have  been  overheard,  and  it  must  be  retrieved. 
After  a  moment's  strained  silence  the  situation  is  saved 
by  her  outcry,  "  In  his  uniform  ! "  Melchisedec  had 
been  in  the  Militia !  She  is  a  master  of  intrigue,  and 
on  her  own  ground  it  is  not  possible  to  outwit  her,  but 
she  is,  of  course,  outwitted  in  the  end  by  the  one  factor 
she  has  no  means  to  deal  with — disinterested  affection. 
Her  failure,  however,  teaches  her  nothing  but  a  change 
of  tactics.  And  the  book  ends  with  a  letter  she  writes 
to  her  sister  from  Rome :  "  Let  the  postmark  be  my 
reply  to  your  letter  received  through  the  Consulate, 
and  most  courteously  delivered  with  the  Consul's  com- 
pliments. We  shall  yet  have  an  ambassador  at  Rome — 
mark  your  Louisa's  words.     Yes,  dearest !  I  am  here, 


EVAN    HARRINGTON  51 

body  and  spirit !  I  have  at  last  found  a  haven,  a  refuge, 
and  let  those  who  condemn  me  compare  the  peace 
of  their  spirits  with  mine.  You  think  that  you  have 
quite  conquered  the  dreadfulness  of  our  origin.  My 
love,  I  smile  at  you !  I  know  it  to  be  impossible  for 
the  Protestant  heresy  to  offer  a  shade  of  consolation. 
Earthly- born,  it  rather  encourages  earthly  distinctions. 
It  is  the  sweet  sovereign  Pontiff  alone  who  gathers  all 
in  his  arms,  not  excepting  tailors.  Here,  if  they  could 
know  it,  is  their  blessed  comfort !  .  .  .  " 

The  Countess,  Jack  Raikes,  the  Great  Mel,  and  Tom 
Cogglesby  are  to  be  conceived  as  a  Dickens-like  back- 
ground,   throwing    into    prominence    the   reality    and 
naturalness  of  Rose.     Yet,  in  one  aspect  only  ;  for,  col- 
lectively, these  eccentrics,  and  not  Rose  or  her  lover, 
form    the    outstanding    feature    of    the    book.     Tom 
Cogglesby's  birthday  celebration  at  the  Green  Dragon 
is  a  scene  memorable  enough  ;  but  it  is  in  Tom  with 
Andrew   at   the    Aurora,    interviewing    Lady   Jocelyn, 
schooling  Jack  Raikes,  that  Meredith  finds  play  for  not 
the  least  significant  of  his  powers.     His  Comic  Spirit, 
for  the  moment,  is  embodied,  to  lie  in  wait  for  every 
impostor  ;  and  Raikes,  "  who  represented  one  who  was 
rehearsing  a  part  he  wished  to  act  before  the  world,  and 
was  not  aware  he  took  the  world  into  his  confidence," 
gives  its  ingenuities  full  play.     Cogglesby's  mind  teem  s 
with  whimsical  notions  for  the  exposure  and  correction 
of  pretenders ;  notions  not  in  any  way  vindictive,  but 
outspoken  and  salutary ;  birth  of  a  child  heart  and  full- 
grown  intelligence,  and  proof,  if  indeed  any  such  proof 
were  required,  that  Cogglesby's  creator  is  in  intimate 
touch    with    the    Spirit    of    Comedy.     And    nowhere 
perhaps  in  the  whole  of  Meredith's  writing  is  his  read- 
ing of  life,  his  faith  in  Earth's  meaning  for  those  who 
are  teachable,  those  who  are  fools  but  for  a  season, 


52  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

better  expressed    than  it  is  here  in  its  earliest  form. 
Love-sick  and  engrossed  in  his  sorrow,  Evan  comes  on 
a  woman   in  extremity  by  the  side  of  the  road.     "  A 
misery    beyond    our    own,"    comments   his   author,   "  is 
a  wholesome  picture  for  youth,  and  though  we  may  not 
for  the  moment  compare  the  deep  with  the  lower  deep, 
we,  if  we  have  a  heart   for  outer  sorrows,  can  forget 
ourselves    in    it.     Evan    had    just   been    accusing    the 
heavens  of  conspiracy  to  disgrace  him.     Those  patient 
heavens   had    listened,    as    is    their   wont.     They    had 
viewed,  and  had   not  been   disordered  by  his  mental 
frenzies.     It  is  certainly  hard  that  they  do  not  come 
down  to  us,  and  condescend  to  tell  us  what  they  mean, 
and  be  dumbfounded  by  the  perspicuity  of  our  argu- 
ments— the  arguments,  for  instance,  that  they  have  not 
fashioned  us  for  the  science  of  the  shears,  and  do  yet 
impel  us  to  wield  them.     Nevertheless,  they  to  whom 
mortal  life  has  ceased  to  be  a  long  matter  perceive  that 
our  appeals  for  conviction  are  answered — now  and  then 
very  closely  upon   the  call.     When  we  have  cast  off 
the  scales  of  hope  and  fancy,  and  surrender  our  claims 
on  mad  chance,  it  is  given  us  to  see  that  some  plan  is 
working  out :  that  the  heavens,  icy  as  they  are  to  the 
pangs  of  our  blood,  have  been  throughout  speaking  to 
our  souls ;  and,  according  to  the  strength  there  exist- 
ing, we  learn  to  comprehend  them.     But  their  language 
is  an  element  of  Time,   whom  primarily    we  have  to 
know." 

Meredith's  criticism  of  his  poem  The  Empty  Purse, 
A  Sermon  to  Our  Later  Prodigal  Son,  has  been  quoted 
already.  As  a  poem  it  is  not  possible  to  rank  it  highly, 
yet,  as  a  deliberate  avowal  of  ideas  which  are  implicit  in 
much  of  his  writing,  it  has  great  value.  Published  in 
1892,  over  thirty  years  after  Evan  Harrington,  it  is  con- 
cerned with  a  similar  theme.    A  penniless  and  destitute 


EVAN    HARRINGTON  53 

youth  is  discovered  on  a  wayside  bank,  his  empty  purse 

lying  beside  him  for  symbol  of  his  material  prospects, 

"  quenched  youth  "  the  term  by  which  he  is  addressed. 

His  pitiable  condition  wins  him  no  peace  ;  a  moralist  is 

at  hand  who  urges  the  desperation  of  the  prodigal's 

case  as  a  pretext  for  instant  probing  of  his  past.     The 

youth's  history,  he  says,  must  at  once  be  questioned, 

his    whole    life    summoned    and    reviewed.     Memory's 

fullest  aid  is  invoked,  and  it  is  found  that  a  pampered 

childhood  was   succeeded    by  a   season  of  passion  in 

which,  on  account  of  his  wealth,  the  world  presented 

itself  to  the  youth  as  a  feast  for  his  appetites.     Hints 

and  beckonings  of  loveliness  had  indeed  visited  him  in 

boyhood,  but  none  of  the  discipline  needful  for  long  and 

delicate  quests  had  been  his.     Moreover,  any  support 

he  might  have  received   from  conventional  moralities 

was  early  withdrawn  from  him  by  the  most  insidious  of 

corruptions: —  _  ., 

c  Some  one  said 

(Or  was  it  the  thought  into  hearing  grew  ?) 

Not  thou  as  commoner  men  ! 

Thy  stature  puffed  and  it  swayed, 

It  stiffened  to  royal-erect ; 

A  brassy  trumpet  brayed  ; 

A  whirling  seized  thy  head  ; 

The  vision  of  beauty  was  flecked. 

Note  well  the  how  and  the  when, 

The  thing  that  prompted  and  sped. 

Much  pains  is  spent  in  demonstrating  to  the  prodigal 
that  the  homage  of  his  satellites  which  served  to  foster 
this  belief  was  given,  not  to  himself,  but  to  his  well- 
stored  purse.  The  hideous  reality  of  the  "  carnivorous, 
cannibal "  thing  that  he  was  is  pictured  with  brutal  dis- 
tinctness. His  wealth  provided  the  weapons  of  prey ; 
he  has  preyed  disgracefully  on  his  fellows,  men  and 
women  alike,  and  it  is  his  riches  which  are  the  source  of 
the  evil — riches  which  have  been  the  ruin  of  him,  and 
will  be  the  ruin  of  others  after  him.     For  this  is  the 


54  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

burden  of  the  poem,  that  circumstances  which  shelter 
from  conflict  and  foster  any  assumption  of  superiority 
to  his  fellows  are  the  greatest  curse  a  man  can  carry. 
The  sole  wealth  earth  has  to  offer  lies  in  knowledge  won 
from  experience.  And  thus  this  poverty,  this  naked- 
ness that  have  descended  on  the  youth — these  indeed 
are  not  his  ruin,  but  his  golden  opportunity,  his  first 
real  chance  in  life.  Hitherto  he  has  been  enchained, 
imprisoned,  walled  off  by  his  riches  from  comradeship 
with  his  fellows.    The  Sorcerer  Gold  has  had  him  in  his 

SnP  '•  But  now  from  his  cavernous  hold, 

Free  may  thy  soul  be  set, 
As  a  child  of  the  Death  and  the  Life,  to  learn, 
Refreshed  by  some  bodily  sweat, 
The  meaning  of  either  in  turn, 

What  issue  may  come  of  the  two  : — 
A  morn  beyond  mornings,  beyond  all  reach 
Of  emotional  arms  at  the  stretch  to  enfold  : 
A  firmament  passing  our  visible  blue. 

Inexperienced  youth,  in  Meredith's  view,  represents 
little  but  energy,  potentiality,  either  for  good  or  for 
evil.  He  says  of  Evan,  at  the  opening  of  his  career : 
"  He  has  little  character  for  the  moment.  Most  youths 
are  like  Pope's  women  ;  they  have  no  character  at  all." 
And  in  regard  to  another  of  his  heroes  he  is  even  more 
explicit  :  "  Wilfrid  was  a  gallant  fellow,  with  good  stuff 
in  him.  But,  he  was  young.  Ponder  on  that  pregnant 
word,  for  you  are  about  to  see  him  grow.  He  was  less 
a  coxcomb  than  shamefaced  and  sentimental ;  and 
one  may  have  these  qualities  and  be  a  coxcomb  to 
boot,  and  yet  be  a  gallant  fellow  ;  and  harsh,  exacting, 
double-dealing,  and  I  know  not  what  besides,  in  youth. 
The  question  asked  by  nature  is,  '  Has  he  the  heart  to 
take  and  keep  an  impression  ? '  For,  if  he  has,  circum- 
stances will  force  him  on  and  carve  the  figure  of  a  brave 
man  out  of  that  mass  of  contradictions."  a     But  at  what 

1  Sandra  Belloni,  chap.  XIII. 


EVAN    HARRINGTON  55 

cost?  At  the  price  commonly  of  all  the  things  he 
holds  dearest  on  earth ;  whereat  he  reproaches  nature 
his  creator,  and  circumstance  his  sculptor,  forgetful  that 
their  sole  duty  was  to  make  him  a  man.  It  is  clear  at 
the  close  of  Evan  Harrington  that  this  duty  is  per- 
formed. Of  the  hero's  honesty  and  manliness  there  is 
no  longer  a  question ;  he  has  clearly  "  struck  earth "  ; 
that  is,  he  has  grounded  his  efforts  and  ambition  on 
the  reality  of  his  circumstance  and  character.  And  the 
necessity  of  this  "  saving  grasp  in  the  stern-exact "  is  the 
fundamental  belief  of  the  creator  of  General  Ople  and 
Clotilde  von  Riidiger.  A  man  or  woman  whose  aspira- 
tions are  not  rooted  in  fact,  the  primary  fact  being  the 
limitations  of  their  own  character,  is,  in  Meredith's  eyes, 
useless  and  worse.  A  man  must  see  himself  as  he  is, 
divested  of  all  false  and  adventitious  aids,  and  recognise 
exactly  the  nature  of  the  raw  material  with  which  he 
has  to  work,  before  he  can  begin  to  weave  the  fabric  of 
a  life.  In  early  days  the  shuttle  may  seem  to  cross  and 
recross  at  a  furious  pace ;  but,  until  a  pattern  has  been 
chosen  and  the  threads  selected  and  controlled  to  some 
determined  end,  there  will  be  no  issue  upon  the  loom. 
For  the  possibilities  of  self-deception,  of  unreality,  of 
confusion  between  sentiment  and  emotion,  are  almost 
unlimited.  Evan  reclining  in  his  chariot,  on  his  way 
to  his  father's  funeral,  believing  himself  to  be  meditating 
upon  Love  and  Death,  sees  a  halo  cast  about  Tailor- 
dom  and  is  able  to  despise  the  opinion  of  the  world 
that  looks  down  on  it.  Yet  presently,  when  he  finds  he 
has  not  money  enough  for  his  postillion's  tip,  and  sees 
himself  consequently  lowered  in  one  man's  estimation, 
his  pride  is  up  in  arms.  "  To  be  asked  for  what  he  does 
not  possess,  to  be  seen  beggared,  and  to  be  claimed  a 
debtor — alack  !  "  Yet  the  Fates  that  are  at  work  on 
the  moulding  of  Evan  find  that  he  can  "  take  an  im- 


56  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

pression."  He  has  been  deceiving  himself  and  attitud- 
inising before  Rose  Jocelyn,  and  this  experience  with 
the  postillion  gives  him  a  first  glimpse  of  the  truth  : 
"  From  the  vague  sense  of  being  an  impostor,  he  awoke 
to  the  fact  that  he  was  likewise  a  fool."  None  the  less, 
arrived  at  his  destination,  he  informs  his  father's 
creditors  in  the  lordliest  manner  that  their  accounts 
will  be  paid  to  the  last  farthing,  without  pausing  to 
estimate,  either  their  number,  or  the  nature  and  degree 
of  sacrifice  of  himself  that  are  involved.  Evan  has 
shown  himself  capable  of  taking  an  impression,  of 
self-criticism  :  the  severer  task  of  learning  to  keep  it, 
to  remodel  his  habits  upon  it,  lies  before  him  still. 
Yet  his  lesson  is  learned  and  with  swiftness.  And  the 
reason  of  that  swiftness  Meredith  would  have  us  inquire. 
In  part,  of  course,  it  is  due  to  favourable  predispositions 
in  Evan's  nature,  but  it  is  due,  in  the  main,  to  the  weight 
of  the  sculptor's  hand  upon  him  ;  to  the  fact  that  his 
conditions  are  the  very  opposite  of  those  of  the  gilded 
youth  of  the  poem. 

Even  the  hero  of  The  Empty  Purse  is  to  prove  him- 
self manly  at  last ;  but  Meredith  would  have  us  believe 
that  throughout  he  might  have  been  a  good  fellow 
enough,  had  it  not  been  for 

Grandmotherly  Laws 
Giving  rivers  of  gold  to  our  young, 
In  the  days  of  their  hungers  impure. 

In  this  connection  Mr.  Trevelyan  has  already  quoted 
the  diatribe  of  the  democratic  German  professor  who 
calls  Harry  Richmond  to  account  for  the  intellectual 
sluggishness  of  his  class.  The  true  place  for  youth  in 
our  present  conflict  of  parties  and  interests  is,  Meredith 
believes,  on  the  side  of  social  progress  and  experiment, 

As  a  Tentative,  combating  Peace, 
Our  lullaby  word  for  decay. 


EVAN    HARRINGTON  57 

But  inheritance  of  wealth,  he  says,  almost  invariably 
leads  the  inheritor  to  rank  himself  with  the  defenders 
of  privilege,  the  opponents  of  change  and  reform.  This 
Prodigal,  who  is  now  about  to  take  his  right  place 
in  the  fray,  in  the  days  of  his  wealth  has  been 

A  conservative  youth  !  who  the  cream  bowl  skimmed, 
Desiring  affairs  to  be  left  as  they  are. 

Life,  he  will  find,  is  an  art ;  and  much  remains  yet  to  be 
learned  ;  but, 

Rubbing  shoulder  to  shoulder,  as  only  the  book 
Of  the  world  can  be  read,  by  necessity  urged, 

at  last  the  conditions  of  learning  are  his ;  and  more- 
over— for  The  Empty  Purse  is  more  than  a  variation 
of  Meredith's  constant  theme  of  the  necessity  of  self- 
knowledge  and  self-discipline — this  special  experience 
of  his  must  be  held  as  a  trust  for  his  kind.  This  youth 
condemned  to  disaster  by  parental  stupidity  is  called  on 
to  testify  against  the  mistake  from  which  he  has  suffered, 
to  inveigh  against  the  laws  that  protect 

Men's  right  of  bequeathing  their  all  to  their  own 
(With  little  regard  to  the  creatures  they  squeezed) 

as  relics  of  a  non-spiritual  past  and  the  childhood  of  the 
race.  But  the  task  will  not  be  easy ;  for  hitherto 
the  most  idealistic  of  men  have  considered  that  money 
should  be  one  item  at  least  of  their  children's  inherit- 
ance ;  and  the  mass  of  mankind  make  hoarding  for  their 
successors  one  of  the  chief  aims  of  their  lives.  But  con- 
tumely is  not  to  be  dreaded  ; 

'Tis  the  portion  of  them  who  civilize, 
Who  speak  the  word  novel  and  true. 

Courage  and  persistence  needful  for  the  task  are  to 
be  drawn  from  a  comprehensive  vision.  Measuring  the 
present  degree  of  civilisation  against  the  savage  infancy 
of  our  race,  the  day  when  "  our  forefather  hoof  did  its 


58  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

work  in  the  wood,"  we  shall  cease  to  be  distrustful 
of  change,  we  shall  press  forward  to  a  time  when  man's 
soul  shall  have  conquered  his  brutishness  and  brain  rule 
supreme  over  force.  Much  has  been  accomplished  by 
our  ancestors,  but  true  reverence  for  their  efforts  must 
be  shown  in  accepting  our  responsibility  for  further 
development,  and  pressing  on  towards  ideals  as  yet 
unachieved.  And  when  we  have  compassed  this  real 
understanding  of  the  past,  it  will  blossom  in  passionate 
feeling  for  the  future  and  the  lives  yet  to  be.  Man  has 
confused  pleasure  and  luxury  till  he  has  come  to  look 
upon  them  as  identical.  But  the  sources  of  pleasure 
are,  in  fact,  common  and  inexhaustible,  and  when  these 
are  exalted  to  their  true  place  and  preferred  to  luxuries 
only  attainable  by  the  few,  money  at  last  will  assume 
its  real  and  comparatively  elementary  significance. 
That  day  will  bring  to  mankind  joys  that  are  now 
unimagined  and  unimaginable.  The  goal  is  afar ;  but 
meanwhile — and  it  is  one  of  Meredith's  chief  claims  as 
an  idealist  on  our  attention  that  he  always  has  a  mean- 
while— if  we  are  to  lift  Earth  heavenwards,  we  must 
look  to  the  foundations  on  which  our  structure  is  to  be 
reared.  And  to  this  end  he  urges  on  individuals  the 
need  for  closer  contact  with  the  hearts  of  their  fellows 
and  a  deeper  intimacy  with  nature ;  urges  it  in  terms 
not  merely  didactic  but  with  something  at  least  of  the 
emotional  stimulus  of  poetry. 

The  God  in  the  conscience  of  multitudes  feel, 
And  we  feel  deep  to  Earth  at  her  heart, 
We  have  her  communion  with  men, 
New  ground,  new  skies  for  appeal. 

Yield  into  harness  thy  best  and  thy  worst ; 

Away  on  the  trot  of  thy  servitude  start, 

Through  the  rigours,  and  joys  and  sustainments  of  air. 

If  courage  should  falter,  'tis  wholesome  to  kneel. 

Remember  that  well,  for  the  secret  with  some, 

Who  pray  for  no  gift,  but  have  cleansing  in  prayer, 


EVAN    HARRINGTON  59 

And  free  from  impurities,  tower-like  stand. 

I  promise  not  more,  save  that  feasting  will  come 

To  a  mind  and  a  body  no  longer  inversed. 

The  sense  of  large  charity  over  the  land, 

Earth's  wheaten  of  wisdom  dispensed  in  the  rough, 

And  a  bell  ringing  thanks  for  a  sustenance  meal 

Through  the  active  machine  :  lean  fare, 
But  it  carries  a  sparkle  ! 

It  is,  however,  in  the  last  stanza  of  all  that  the 
characteristically  penetrative  analogy — the  truly  Mere- 
dithian  quality — is  apparent.  Who  but  Meredith,  it 
may  justly  be  asked,  would  have  attempted  this  lengthy 
political  exposition  in  verse?  But  who  else,  it  may 
as  justly  be  answered,  could  crown  such  complicated 
sermonising  with  an  image  so  culminating  and  incisive? 

Our  season  of  drought  is  reminder  rude  : — 

No  later  than  yesternoon, 

I  looked  on  the  horse  of  a  cart, 

By  the  wayside  water-trough. 
How  at  every  draught  of  his  bride  of  thirst 
His  nostrils  widened  !     The  sight  was  good  : 

Food  for  us,  food,  such  as  first 

Drew  our  thoughts  to  earth's  lowly  for  food. 


CHAPTER   VI 

MODERN    LOVE 

JK/T ODERN  LOVE  appeared  in  1862,  eleven  years 
after  the  Poems,  and  three  years  after  the 
publication  of  Richard  Feverel.  Mr.  Swinburne's  letter 
in  reply  to  the  Spectators  adverse  review  of  the 
poem  has  long  been  renowned.  But  half  a  century 
has  passed,  and  a  plea  that  the  work  is  of  complex 
delicacy,  demanding  serious  and  considerate  estima- 
tion, is  apt  to  fall  flat  on  the  ears  of  a  generation 
which  knows  little  of  the  battles  by  which  its  heritage 
was  won.  Yet  Mr.  Swinburne's  challenge  has  a  vigour 
and  generosity  characteristic  of  him,  and  some  at  least 
of  his  words  time  has  not  staled  :  "  A  more  perfect 
piece  of  writing  no  man  alive  has  ever  turned  out  than 
the  sonnet  beginning,  *  We  saw  the  swallows  gathering 
in  the  sky '  "  ;  and  again  :  "  Work  of  such  subtle  strength, 
such  depth  of  delicate  power,  such  passionate  and 
various  beauty ;  in  some  points,  as  it  seems  to  me,  a 
poem  above  the  aim  and  beyond  the  reach  of  any 
but  its  author." 

In  the  last  forty  years  the  literary  critics  at  any  rate 
have  come  round  to  Mr.  Swinburne's  opinion.  They 
have  decided  also  to  follow  him  in  the  minor,  but  in 
its  effect  very  important,  matter  of  nomenclature.  A 
painter,  speaking  to  painters,  may  call  red  blue,  taking 
it  for  granted  that  the  dominant  quality  is  as  apparent 
to  his  hearers  as  himself;  and  a  poet  may  speak  of  the 

60 


MODERN    LOVE  61 

sections  of  Modern  Love  as  if  they  were  sonnets. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  to  cavil  at  a  master-poet's  employ- 
ment of  the  term  in  a  journal  whose  readers  may  be 
supposed  acquainted  with  literary  forms,  in  order  to 
protest  against  it  as  misleading  to  a  general  and  undis- 
criminating  public.  Mr.  Le  Gallienne,  indeed,  after 
discussing  the  question  at  length,  comes  to  an  opposite 
conclusion.  But  the  value  of  the  conclusion  is  impaired 
by  a  strange  supposition  that  underlies  his  argument. 
He  writes  throughout  as  though  it  had  been  suggested 
that  Meredith  could  not  have  written  Modern  Love 
in  a  series  of  sonnets  if  he  would.  In  face  of  the  fact 
that  Meredith  has  produced  elsewhere  sonnets  worthy 
to  rank  among  the  greatest  in  our  language,  we  may  be 
allowed  to  dismiss  this  supposition  as  irrelevant.  The 
truth  is,  that  in  using  the  word  sonnet  we  are  obscuring 
rather  than  exalting  the  refinement  of  the  work.  The 
fifty  divisions  of  Modem  Love  contain  sixteen  lines 
each,  and  these  lines  are  divided  into  quatrains ;  the 
first  and  fourth,  and  the  second  and  third  lines  of  each 
quatrain  rhyming.  All  that  these  separate  sections 
have  in  common  with  the  sonnet  is  the  length  of  their 
lines  and  the  pithiness  of  their  expression  ;  they  have 
nothing  of  its  complexity  or  finality  of  structure.  In 
many  cases,  notably  in  XVIII  and  XIX,  XXI  and 
XXII,  xxill  and  XXIV,  the  last  four  lines  of  one 
section  might  quite  well  be  placed  above  the  first  four 
of  the  next.  In  part  the  poem  is  pure  narrative,  and 
the  treatment  of  the  theme  is  necessarily  continuous. 
The  divisions  are  roughly  comparable  to  chapters, 
serviceable  in  allowing  for  alterations  of  scale  or 
changes  of  aspect,  but  sometimes  merely  divisions. 
For  the  author's  object  in  simplifying  and  modifying 
the  sonnet-form  has  been  to  secure,  with  the  advantage 
of  divisional  variety,  a  flowing,  almost  a  processional 


62  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

continuity  of  dramatic  effect ;  a  continuity  which  would 
have  been  destroyed  by  greater  complexity  in  structure. 
A  distinction  is  to  be  drawn  in  Meredith's  writing 
between  avoidable  and  unavoidable  obscurities.  Of 
poems  in  which  the  obscurities  are  almost  wholly  of  the 
latter  kind  no  better  example  is  to  be  found  than 
Modern  Love.  In  phrasing  it  is  not  obscure,  the 
wording  is  perfectly  straightforward  and  direct  ;  the 
difficulty  lies  in  the  matter  and  not  in  the  manner. 
What,  we  should  ask  ourselves,  exactly  is  the  theme  ? 
It  is  concerned  certainly  with  "  the  usual  three," 
husband  and  wife  and  lover,  and  their  acts  are,  on  the 
whole,  of  a  regrettably  commonplace  order.  But  these 
acts  and  deeds  are  not  the  subject  of  the  poem  ;  they 
form  merely  a  groundwork  generally  taken  for  granted. 
The  subject  is  the  mental  atmosphere  and  experience 
arising  from  these,  the  fruit  of  knowledge  and  insight 
coming  out  of  elements  earthly  enough  in  themselves. 
The  difficulty  of  comprehension  lies  in  the  fact  that 
the  poems  of  Modem  Love  give,  not  a  narrative,  but  a 
running  commentary  on  a  narrative,  which  is  told  by 
implication  only;  and  the  difficulty  is  increased  by  the 
fact  that  a  large  number  of  the  poems,  even  in  isolation, 
are  singularly  beautiful ;  separate  elevations,  so  satisfy- 
ing to  the  reader's  vision,  that  he  is  apt  to  rest  content 
with  their  acquaintance  without  complying  with  the 
demand  on  his  imagination  for  a  ground-plan  which 
shall  relate  and  solidify  the  whole.  Yet,  because  that 
demand  on  the  reader  is  real,  any  true  exposition  of 
the  poem  may  not  escape  from  an  attempt  to  provide 
it.  The  task  is  by  no  means  alluring,  because  its  aim 
must  be  to  supply  the  unexalted  and  non-poetic 
elements  which  are  without  place  in  the  poem.  There 
is  a  danger,  too,  in  the  undertaking  ;  for  it  was  no  part 
of  Meredith's  object  in  dealing  with  the  most  intricate 


MODERN    LOVE  63 

and  intimate  of  human  problems  to  provide  placards 
that  whoso  runs  may  read,  or  garbage  for  persons 
nosing  in  the  mire.  Yet  it  is  necessitated,  because 
he  has  presumed  more  than  the  imagination  of 
ordinarily  intelligent  readers  has  proved  itself  able  to 
afford. 

Meredith's  achievement  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  has 
exalted  to  poetical  heights  the  surroundings  and 
effects  of  a  calamity  in  the  life  of  every  day.  His 
commentary  on  the  situation  raises  it  to  tragedy, 
and  makes  us  slow  to  discover  that  it  is  hardly  tragic 
in  itself.  Yet  this  is  a  truth  to  which  the  most  mag- 
nificent and  poetic  of  the  sonnets  bear  witness.  For 
they  invariably  escape  from  the  bounds  of  the  narrative 
to  comments  and  conclusions  which  transcend  the 
circumstances.  The  philosophy  and  the  workmanship 
of  Modern  Love  are  worthy  of  the  writer's  maturity  ; 
the  underlying  story — the  skeleton — is  inadequate,  the 
offspring  of  his  youth,  an  inadequacy  for  which  he, 
surely,  has  atoned  most  generously  in  prefacing  the 
second  edition  (1892)  with  a  poem  laying  stress  on 
the  spiritual  and  immaterial  issues,  and  in  adding  The 
Sage  Enamoured  and  the  Honest  Lady  to  the  volume. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  consider  the  first  poem  and  the 
last  of  the  great  series  in  order  to  recognise  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  plot,  not  only  to  Meredith's  later 
and  maturer  thought,  but  to  its  original  purpose. 

I 

By  this  he  knew  she  wept  with  waking  eyes : 
That,  at  his  hand's  light  quiver  by  her  head, 
The  strange  low  sobs  that  shook  their  common  bed, 
Were  called  into  her  with  a  sharp  surprise, 
And  strangled  mute,  like  little  gaping  snakes, 
Dreadfully  venomous  to  him.     She  lay 
Stone-still,  and  the  long  darkness  flowed  away 
With  muffled  pulses.     Then,  as  midnight  makes 


64  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Her  giant  heart  of  Memory  and  Tears 

Drink  the  pale  drug  of  silence,  and  so  beat 

Sleep's  heavy  measure,  they  from  head  to  feet 

Were  moveless,  looking  through  their  dead  black  years, 

By  vain  regret  scrawled  over  the  blank  wall. 

Like  sculptured  effigies  they  might  be  seen 

Upon  their  marriage-tomb,  the  sword  between  ; 

Each  wishing  for  the  sword  that  severs  all. 


Thus  piteously  Love  closed  what  he  begat : 
The  union  of  this  ever-diverse  pair ! 
These  two  were  rapid  falcons  in  a  snare, 
Condemned  to  do  the  flitting  of  the  bat. 
Lovers  beneath  the  singing  sky  of  May, 
They  wandered  once  ;  clear  as  the  dew  on  flowers  : 
But  they  fed  not  on  the  advancing  hours  : 
Their  hearts  held  cravings  for  the  buried  day. 
Then  each  applied  to  each  that  fatal  knife, 
Deep  questioning,  which  probes  to  endless  dole. 
Ah,  what  a  dusty  answer  gets  the  soul 
When  hot  for  certainties  in  this  our  life  ! — 
In  tragic  hints  here  see  what  evermore 
Moves  dark  as  yonder  midnight  ocean's  force, 
Thundering  like  ramping  hosts  of  warrior  horse, 
To  throw  that  faint  thin  line  upon  the  shore  ! 

Might  we  not  fairly  have  supposed  from  these  that 
the  intervening  poems  would  be  concerned,  not  with 
deception  on  the  part  of  one  of  the  actors  and  petty 
jealousy  and  retaliation  on  the  part  of  the  other,  but  with 
some  tragedy  of  inevitable  loss,  of  wholly  dreaded  and 
only  half-merited  pain,  of  loneliness  outlasting  love? 
The  truth  is  that  in  these  and  many  similar  poems  in 
the  series  the  writer  outsoars  the  conception  he  has 
formulated,  and  moves  on  a  plane  in  which  some  at 
least  of  the  antics  he  describes  elsewhere1  can  find  no 
place. 

For,  in  the  tale  as  it  actually  is,  "  he,"  the  husband,  is 
maddened  by  discovering  that  his  wife  is  spiritually 
unfaithful  to  him,  and  in  love  with  another  man.     The 

1  See  xv,  xxxvi,  xlv. 


MODERN    LOVE  65 

story  is  told  throughout  by  the  husband,  who  describes 
his  reactions  of  feeling  beneath  the  mask  of  a  polite  11 
demeanour — how  at  one  moment  he  is  enraged  by 
his  wife's  grace  of  manner  and  bearing  into  regard- 
ing her  as  the  vilest  spot  on  a  blackened  earth,  at 
another  strives  in  reactionary  gentleness  for  magnani- 
mity, while,  in  remorse  for  the  sterner  feeling,  he  learns 
the  bitterness  of  his  pain.  From  thought  of  his  wife 
he  turns  to  "the  man,"  her  would-be  lover,  first  to  in 
call  him  negligible — a  worm  to  be  trodden  under  foot 
— then  to  writhe  at  perceiving  him  irradiated  by  her 
gaze.  The  power  of  that  look  to  glorify  what  it  falls 
upon  drives  him  to  half  curse  the  beauty  that  holds  him 
bound,  and  in  the  same  breath  to  question  why  he 
foregoes  its  sweetness — "  It  cannot  be  such  harm  on  her 
cool  brow  to  put  a  kiss?"  But  no!  He  has  been 
deceived.  The  object  of  his  love  exists  no  longer — 
"The  hour  has  struck,  though  I  heard  not  the  bell!" 
He  attempts  to  turn  for  relief  to  other  interests,  but  iv 
life  has  gone  out  of  them  all.  Illusion  or  diversion 
lasts  for  a  moment  only,  and  his  agony  revives  the 
fiercer  for  its  lull.  But  he  is  not  a  sensational  being 
merely ;  half  the  poignancy  of  his  suffering  lies  in  the 
fact  that  he  is  at  war  with  himself,  that  his  intellect  has 
a  standard  to  which  his  senses  prevent  his  actions  from 
conforming.  Into  his  wife's  interest  in  household 
affairs  he  reads  hypocrisy  and  scheming.  He  sees  v 
her  using  her  beauty  as  a  net  to  ensnare  him,  and  the 
acute  temptation  of  allurements  by  which  he  is  almost 
beguiled  increases  his  bitterness.  But  she  is  befooled 
too.  Her  eyes  have  been  trained  for  shining,  not  for 
use ;  and  they  have  not  enough  penetration  to  discover 
the  existence  of  a  force  that  avails  to  restrain  the 
impulse  she  is  appealing  to.  A  chance  endearment 
of  his   is    met,  not    with    womanly   shame,   but   in    a  vi 


66  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

way  only  suggesting  that  her  love  has  cooled.  With 
sounds  of  midnight  sobbing  in  his  ears,  knowing  her 
feeling  to  be  intensely  alive  and  only  the  object  of 
it  changed,  he  stings  himself  with  thoughts  of  her 
wantonness  and  the  title  her  conduct  might  warrant 
him  in  using.  But  all  the  while  this  agony  is  beneath 
the  surface,  an  under-current  at  the  fireside  where 
they  sit — "  she  laughing  at  a  quiet  joke "  ;  for  the 
decencies  and  appearances  of  their  outward  life  are 
being  strenuously  upheld.  Her  radiant  beauty  pursues 
him  continually,  driving  him  to  believe  that  her  faith- 
lessness is  the  more  criminal  for  having  avoided  the 

vii   most    obvious    expression,    and     taunting    him    from 

vin  one  extreme  of  feeling  to  the  other.     At  times  he  is 

passionately  pitiful,  caring  more   for  her  lost  loyalty 

ix  than   his    own    pain,    at    others    marvelling    that    the 

wild  beast  within  him  does  not  seek  its  brute  revenge. 

x  Where,  and  what,  he  asks,  is  the  nature  of  the  crime 

that  has  brought  this  wretchedness  upon  him  ?     Merely 

that  he  has  slept  and  wakened  ;  and  waking,  refused 

to   act   upon  the  impulse   of  a   dream.     The   beauty 

xi  of  earth  and  returning  spring  serve  only  to  intensify 

his  consciousness  of  loss.      In  imagination,  he  points 

his    wife    to    the   golden    west,   where   "in    an    amber 

cradle  near  the  sun's  decline"  is  lying  the  infant  love 

xii  that  she  has  slain.  But  the  greatest  of  her  crimes 
is  not  that  she  has  stripped  him  of  the  future ;  she 
has  robbed  him  of  the  past.  For  it  is  a  reality  no 
longer,  though  the  shadow  of  its  mockery  goes  with 

xin  him  for  ever.  And  here  again  the  contrast  of  man's 
life  with  nature's  makes  itself  felt.  Why,  he  asks, 
can  we  not  learn  of  her  whose  care  is  for  Seasons 
not  Eternities,  and  who  bestows  no  regret  upon  her 
fading  flowers  ?  Life  lived  only  in  the  present,  without 
memory   or   desire — that  surely  must  be  the  way  of 


MODERN   LOVE  67 

escape  ?  And  yet  the  analogy  is  not  complete  ;  for  the 
human  rose — love  rooted  and  renewed  in  sense — is  a 
flower  of  surpassing  loveliness. 

A  fourth  actor  in  the  drama  is  now  introduced.  The 
husband  turns  for  solace  to  a  friend,  known  through-  xiv 
out  the  rest  of  the  poem  as  "  My  Lady,"  in  distinc- 
tion from  "  Madam,"  his  wife.  The  immediate  result 
is  that  contempt  for  "  Madam  "  is  aroused  by  signs  in 
her  of  a  veering  fit  and  jealous  renewal  of  affection. 
This  new  element  of  scorn  is  perhaps  intended  to  serve 
as  excuse  for  the  next  poem,  surely  one  of  the  most  xv 
unpleasant  in  the  series,  in  which  he  awakes  his  wife 
from  sleep  or  from  pretence  of  sleep,  to  show  two 
letters  both  in  her  own  handwriting,  one  written  long 
ago  to  himself,  the  other  lately :  "  The  words  are  very 
like :  the  name  is  new."  Meanwhile,  they  still  appear 
to  the  world  as  the  happiest  of  couples.  His  wife  shines 
as  a  hostess  and  his  guests  are  excellently  enter-  xvii 
tained — "  they  see  no  ghost."  This  game  of  Hiding 
the  Skeleton  has  a  certain  zest,  and  the  players  begin  to 
admire  one  another's  acting.  The  husband  at  times 
is  tempted  to  envy  the  uncomplicated  lives  of  the  xvm 
country  bumpkins  dancing  on  the  green,  till  he  reflects 
upon  the  sources  of  their  enjoyment.  Torn  by  conflict- 
ing impulses  towards  gentleness  and  cruelty — reflect-  xix 
ing  that  to  escape  from  inconstancy  to  one  person 
by  forging  vows  to  another  is  the  road  by  which  love 
drifts  into  the  market-place — he  concludes  that  the 
only  really  enviable  condition  must  be  that  of  the 
village  idiot.  His  attempt  to  view  the  situation  im- 
partially is  further  complicated  by  the  discovery  of  xx 
"a  wanton-scented  tress"  in  a  long-unused  desk  of  his 
own,  which  serves  as  reminder  of  deeds  for  which  he, 
on  his  side,  stands  in  need  of  forgiveness.  One  even- 
ing   a    friend,   who    has    scoffed    at    lovers    hitherto,  xxi 


68  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

stands  with  them  on  the  lawn  and  begins  the  tale  of 
his  "  most  wondrous  she  "  and,"  convinced  that  words  of 
wedded  lovers  must  bring  good,"  entreats  their  blessing. 
Forgetful  for  an  instant  of  his  presence,  their  eyes  meet 
in  horror.  Then,  recovering  themselves  quickly,  they 
give  what  he  requires.  But  a  moment  later  the  wife 
falls  fainting  to  the  ground,  and  the  irony  of  the  by- 
stander's probable  reading  of  the  event  flashes  through 
her  husband's  mind.  Soon  it  becomes  evident  to  him 
that  she  is  hovering  on  the  brink  of  some  confession  ; 

xxn  her  movements  are  irresolute  and  tentative,  and  once 
she  stands  before  him  in  tears.  But  words  do  not 
come.  Her  husband  will  not  question,  and  a  gulf  that 
seems    impassable    yawns   between    them.     Christmas 

xxni  arrives,  and  they  are  together  at  a  country-house 
overflowing  with  guests ;  they  share  an  attic  bed- 
room, and  from  the  accident  that  brings  them  thus 
together,  learn  how  wide  the  estrangement,  how  deep 
the  mortification  that  divides  them.  The  husband  sets 
himself  to  freeze  with  the  freezing  cold  outside  :  it  is 
more  than  his  wife  can  bear.     But  he  steels  his  heart 

xxiv  against  tokens  of  her  suffering.  Her  offence  he 
knows  is  only  against  love  ;  but  he  persuades  himself 
that  a  grosser  sin  would  have  been  easier  to  forgive. 
He  will  not  be  propitiated  by  signs  of  her  unhappiness, 
though  he  has  to  call  loudly  on  his  sense  of  dignity 
in  order  to  dismiss  his  longing.  He  questions  her 
ironically  as  to  her  distaste  for  a  French  novel  she  is 
xxv  reading.  Why  does  she  pronounce  it  unnatural  ? 
because  the  heroine  is  compelled  to  choose  between 
her  husband  and  her  lover,  and  chooses  as  a  woman 
should?  —  unromantic  possibly,  but  true  to  life ! 
Musing  on  the  serpent  which  has  taken  love's  place  in 

xxvi  his  heart,  any  consciousness  of  his  own  shortcoming 
forsakes  him,  and  he  thinks  only  of  the  wrong  which 


MODERN   LOVE  69 

has  been  done  to  him.  It  is,  he  believes,  still  possible 
to  pardon  the  doer  of  it,  if  she  will  fling  her  cowardice 
to  the  winds  and  make  frank  and  free  confession  ;  but 
he  has  no  help  to  lend  her  :  "  You  that  made  love  bleed, 
you  must  bear  all  the  venom  of  his  tooth." 

Nervous    and    unstrung,   he    determines    to   fall    in 
with    his    doctor's    prescription,    and    seek    distraction  xxvn 
wherever  it  may  offer.     He  is  inclined  to  be  on  good 
terms  with   the   devil,  who    proves   friendly  when    no 
other  helper   is   at   hand,  and   he  begins  a  period  of 
dalliance  with  "My  Lady"  in  a  spirit  of  pure  devilry  xxvm 
and  cynicism.      But  because  in  the  past  he  has  had 
true  feeling  for  this  friend,  his  flirtation  develops  into 
something    more  vital,   and   the  reality  of  his   outcry  xxix 
on  what  the  relation  is  not  bears  witness  to  his  having 
discovered  exactly  what  it  is.    In  the  light  of  this  know- 
ledge he  begins  to  generalise  on  the  growth  and  nature 
of    love.      But    though    his    words    are    brilliant,    his  xxx 
estimate  is  cynical,  and  amounts  to  little  that  he  has 
not  formulated  earlier  in  the  poem.    Love  is  a  dream — 
an  illusion — and,  when  it  crumbles,  man  does  best  to 
recognise  himself  as  an  animal  with  animal  desires,  and 
employ  his  intelligence  in  satisfying  them  scientifically. 
He  will  act  on  his  theory,  and,  instead  of  sentimental 
romancing,  a  relentless  statement  of  fact  shall  form  his 
sonnet  to  his  lady's  eyes.     But  she  is  intelligent  and 
capable   of  facing   realities ;    she   has  "  that   rare  gift  xxxi 
to  beauty,   Common  Sense,"  and  in  their  intercourse 
his  spirit  begins  to  revive.     Relationship  with  her  has 
unique  qualities.     He  insists  repeatedly  on  this,  trying 
hard  to  persuade  himself  that  it  embraces  and  super- 
sedes  the   old.      He   dwells   on    the   charms   that  his 
Lady   adds    to    her    intelligence,    and    yet    the    truth  xxxn 
will  out.     The  episode  is  unreal ;    he  knows  that  his 
wife's  place  has  not  been  taken ;  he  is  inwardly  torn 


70  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

and  fretted  by  living  memories,  "  a  dying  something, 
never  dead."  He  begins  to  suspect  that  the  cure  for 
the  wound  his  wife  has  dealt  does  not  lie  with  any 
other  member  of  her  sex.  But  his  nerves  are  all  on 
edge,  and  he  extracts  a  certain  cynical  pleasure  from 
the  thought  of  her  bewilderment  should  she  chance 

xxxm  to  spy  upon  his  letters  to  his  friend  ;  he  writes  in 
one  of  the  inevitable  soiling  to  a  man's  soul  incurred 
in  a  hand-to-hand  tussle  with  the  devil.  The  wife, 
meanwhile,   has    determined    on    a    discussion    of  the 

xxxiv  whole  situation,  in  the  hope  that  some  understand- 
ing between  them  may  be  reached.  But  his  interval  of 
cynical  enjoyment  and  would-be  detachment  from  emo- 
tion has  left  him  in  no  mood  for  passionate  interviews, 
so  he  freezes  her  with  commonplaces  and  conventional 
courtesies,  and  "  Niagara,  or  Vesuvius,  is  deferred." 
xxxv  Yet  he  is  a  little  uneasy  under  the  muteness  he 
has  again  compelled,  and,  later,  the  feeling  is  in- 
creased by  his  wife's  suggestion,  under  cover  of  a 
game  of  forfeits,  that  the  game  they  play  is  hardly 
worth  the  cost.  The  action  of  the  next  two  poems 
maintains  the  conventional  level  on  which  he  has  in- 

xxxvi  sisted.  "My  Lady"  and  "  Madam"  are  introduced,  and 
their  probing  of  one  another's  deficiencies,  under  cover 
of  appreciative  comment,  affords  amusement  to  the 
man  who  stands  between  them.  The  actors  are  next 
seen  merged  in  a  company  of  persons  promenading  a 

xxxvn  garden  terrace  before  dinner.  In  the  harmonious 
and  discreet  atmosphere  that  surrounds  them  all 
violence  seems  far  off  and  unreal.  Though  within 
sound  of  his  wife's  voice  and,  in  the  course  of  his 
pacings  with  his  partner,  catching  constant  glimpses 
of  his  Lady,  the  husband  questions  the  existence  of  a 
problem  :  "  Our  tragedy,"  he  asks,  "  is  it  alive  or  dead?" 
But  the  reality  of  conflict  and  of  feeling  is  quickly  re- 


MODERN    LOVE  71 

asserted  when,  in  evident  compunction,  his  friend  urges 
him  to  return  to  his  wife.  For  in  one  of  the  finest 
poems  of  the  series  he  implores  his  Lady  to  allow  xxxvm 
him  to  retain  in  her  his  one  spiritual  anchorage;  the 
bond  with  his  wife  is  broken  past  mending,  and  the 
only  remaining  choice  for  him  is  between  love  and  vile- 
ness.  The  Pity  of  which  she  speaks  has,  he  says,  no 
place ;  his  wife  is  like  a  child,  who  merely  values  a 
thing  because  it  is  destroyed  and  is  no  longer  to  be 
had.  To  counsel  him  to  return  to  her  is  to  drive 
him  to  evil.  To  his  argument  and  his  passion  his 
Lady  yields,  and  there  follows  one  golden  hour  of  xxxix 
moonlight  and  of  song  in  which  at  last  his  "  bride  of 
every  sense"  seems  found.  Once  more  his  spirit  is 
attuned  to  harmonies  of  earth  and  air,  and  the  lovers 
stand  half-dreaming  beside  a  rippling  brook.  They 
are  in  shadow  when  a  man  and  woman  appear.  In- 
truders! who  are  they?  he  asks,  little  thinking  what 
the  answer  is  to  be.  "  The  woman  bears  my  name  and 
honour.  Their  hands  touch  !  "  Headlong,  all  the  old 
riot  and  confusion  have  returned  ;  in  a  frenzy  of  feeling 
the  husband  is  once  more  helplessly  adrift.  xl 

Peace  is  not  to  be  attained  by  recourse  to  one  "  in- 
flammable to  love  as  fire  to  wood,"  yet  his  new  ecstasy 
is  paralysed    by  fear  that   his   old    love  is  vital  still. 
The  ground  rocks  under  his  feet ;   he  can  be  certain 
of  nothing — only  he  recognises  that  the  episode  with 
"My  Lady"   has  solved   nothing,  and    indirectly  half 
perceives  his  wife's  worth  through  the  eyes  of  her  lover,  xli 
At  any  rate,  some   attempt   at   reconciliation    is  im- 
perative ;  beyond  that  he  cannot  see,  but  so  far  he  is 
determined.      The   attempt   is  made,  but,  unblest  by  xlii 
love,  their  kisses  drive   them    further   apart.     And   in  xliii 
the  cruel  east  wind  of  the  next  morning  he  wanders 
on  the  seashore,  imagining  the  meeting-ground  of  wind 


72  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

and  wave  as  the  burial-place  of  love  defiled.  Where 
or  whose  the  fault  he  cannot  tell,  but  the  evil  he  so 
dreaded  has  come  upon  him.  His  bitterness  has  gone, 
but  he  is  linked  to  his  wife  henceforth  by  pity,  not 
xliv  by  love.  He  does  his  best  to  hide  the  change, 
but  she  perceives  it  and  will  not  rest  content.  The 
price  of  love  she  feels  has  been  paid,  and  she  has  not 
insight  enough  to  find  the  key  to  a  new  and  deeper 
estrangement.  To  her  mind  the  sole  explanation  of 
her  husband's  coldness  lies  in  the  existence  of  her 
rival ;  he  gathers  a  rose,  and  she  asks  him  for  it  to 
xlv  grind  it  underfoot,  convinced  that  it  is  in  some 
way  associated  with  his  forbidden  love.  And  so  the 
days  go  on,  until  at  last  the  awful  silence  is  broken  by 
an  unexpected  incident.  Unable  one  morning  to  find 
his  wife,  he  goes  half-involuntarily  to  seek  her  in  the 
copse  which  was  the  scene  of  their  courtship.  He 
finds  her  there  with  her  lover  and,  going  forward,  offers 
her  his  arm,  ignoring  the  presence  of  a  third.  She 
accepts  it  without  embarrassment,  and  her  lover  passes 
shadow-like  and  unnoticed  from  their  view.  He  feels 
that  his  wife  is  on  the  brink  of  explanatory  speech, 
and,  before  the  words  can  be  framed,  he  declares  his 
full  confidence  in  her.  The  storm  and  stress  of  their 
conflict  is  over,  and  for  a  moment  at  least  their  lives 

xlvii  are  irradiated  by  an  afterglow  of  their  passion.  While 
the  swallows  are  gathering  in  the  evening  air,  they 
stand  together  surrounded  by  an  atmosphere  of  gentle- 
ness and  peace.  The  husband  is  able  at  last  to  speak 
with   honesty  and   openness ;    all    that   is    to    be   said 

xlviii  they  say.  But,  alas  for  woman's  nature !  his  wife 
cannot  perceive  his  meaning ;  her  judgment  and  her 
sensations  are  too  closely  intertwined,  and,  when  he 
introduces  his  Lady's  name,  she  is  deaf  to  all  else. 
She  breaks  away  from  him,  fixed  in  her  idea  that  she 


MODERN    LOVE  73 

must  set  him  free  to  seek  her  rival.  Argument  is 
useless,  but  none  the  less  he  follows  and  finds  her  on 
the  seashore.  She  takes  his  hand  and  seems  xlix 
amenable  to  his  control,  happy  too  in  his  solicitude, 
though  less  vital  than  her  wont.  Some  change  has 
come  over  her ;  midnight  brings  the  key.  She  calls 
her  husband  and  asks  for  his  embrace.  She  has  taken 
poison. 

An  analysis  intentionally  restricted  to  the  actualities 
the  poem  presupposes,  can  give  no  conception  of  its 
beauty  and  scope.  And  even  in  regard  to  the  drama 
itself  a  distinction  should  be  drawn  between  the 
spiritual  atmosphere  of  the  last  ten  divisions  and  that 
of  the  preceding  forty.  In  XLV  and  XLVI  there  are 
momentary  reactions  to  a  lower  level,  but,  on  the  whole, 
the  story,  in  these  concluding  poems,  touches  and 
moves  on  a  higher  plane.  The  characters  make  real 
efforts  at  disentanglement,  and  their  hopes  for  recon- 
ciliation are  baffled  by  forces  deeper  and  more  compli- 
cated than  wilfulness.  The  language  of  metaphor 
rises  in  beauty  and  power  with  the  theme,  till  it  cul- 
minates in  an  image  embodying  the  conflicting  majesty 
and  futility  of  human  endeavour,  and  the  poet  sets  the 
crown  upon  his  vision  of  mortality.  In  this  closing 
quatrain  thought  and  metaphor  are  matched,  and  both 
are  at  their  zenith.  And  the  poem  which  forms  at  once 
the  resting-place  and  the  bridge,  between  the  passion  of 
the  past  and  the  pitifulness  of  the  future,  is  of  an  ex- 
quisite, almost  magical,  reflectiveness : 

We  saw  the  swallows  gathering  in  the  sky, 

And  in  the  osier-isle  we  heard  their  noise. 

We  had  not  to  look  back  on  summer  joys, 

Or  forward  to  a  summer  of  bright  dye  : 

But  in  the  largeness  of  the  evening  earth 

Our  spirits  grew  as  we  went  side  by  side. 

The  hour  became  her  husband  and  my  bride. 

Love  that  had  robbed  us  so,  thus  blessed  our  dearth  ! 


74  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

The  pilgrims  of  the  year  waxed  very  loud 

In  multitudinous  chatterings,  as  the  flood 

Full  blown  came  from  the  West,  and  like  pale  blood 

Expanded  to  the  upper  crimson  cloud. 

Love  that  had  robbed  us  of  immortal  things, 

This  little  moment  mercifully  gave, 

Where  I  have  seen  across  the  twilight  wave 

The  swan  sail  with  her  young  beneath  her  wings. 


CHAPTER   VII 

SANDRA   BELLONI    AND   VITTORIA 

OANDRA  BELLONI,  published  in  1864  as  Emilia 
in  England,  posesses  an  intensity  of  theme  which 
fuses  the  leading  characteristics  of  Meredith's  thought, 
and  shows  us  the  springs  of  his  feeling  at  their  source. 
Emilia  is  a  revelation,  an  unveiling,  as  it  were,  of  an 
ideal ;  and  all  the  persons  she  directly  touches,  Tracy 
Runningbrook,  Merthyr,  Wilfrid,  Lady  Charlotte,  even 
Mr.  Pole  and  Mr.  Pericles,  are  lit  with  her  fire.  With 
her  as  the  pivot,  they  move  within  the  radius  of 
Meredith's  genius,  the  central  circle  of  feeling  in  which 
his  touch  never  errs.  But  the  characters  outside  this 
circle  are  many ;  and  so  lengthy  is  the  treatment 
accorded  to  some  of  them,  we  cannot  but  suspect  they 
were  meant  to  be  inside  it.  The  sisters  Pole,  in  spite 
of  the  complexity  with  which  they  are  analysed, 
belong  to  the  same  class  as  the  Ladies  Culmer  and 
Busshe — the  large  class  of  Meredith's  unvitalised  char- 
acters ;  they  are  not  individuals,  they  form  collectively 
the  middle  distance  between  the  real  persons  and  the 
background.  Viewed  thus,  as  representing  the  "  fine 
shades,"  the  "  nice  feelings,"  they  are  excellent ;  but 
long  before  Mrs.  Chump  offers  Emilia  a  sovereign  for 
information  as  to  who  pairs  with  who  and  what  the 
sisters  are  meaning,  we  weary  of  their  manoeuvres  as 
well  as  of  their  author's  efforts  to  make  us  think  of 
them  separately.     And  though  some  of  Mrs.  Chump's 

75 


76  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

doings,  notably  the  scene  in  which  Braintop  is  employed 
in  writing  her  letter  to  the  Poles,  are  extremely  funny, 
she  is  not  on  the  whole  very  credible,  and  her  departed 
husband  mere  caricature.  Edward  Buxley  and  Sir 
Twickenham  Pryme,  even  Captain  Gambier  and  Pur- 
cell  Barrett,  are  little  more  than  lay  figures.  Yet  in 
view  of  the  heart  of  the  story,  we  begin  to  question 
whether  this  want  of  vitalisation  has  not  a  use.  House- 
maids allege  that  sunshine  puts  their  fires  out ;  Emilia 
reduces  these  persons  to  shadows,  and  glows  among 
them  like  a  star. 

It  is  not  easy  to  understand  why  devotees  of  "The 
Pilgrim's  Scrip,"  and  admirers  of  Meredith's  teaching, 
do  not  more  commonly  particularise  Sandra  Belloni  as 
among  the  richest  mines  of  his  wisdom.  Nowhere  are 
the  gems  of  his  insight  more  lavishly  scattered.  There 
is  sparkling  literary  criticism  and  comment,  only  not 
dwelt  upon  here  because  it  has  place  in  a  subsequent 
chapter.  Beyond  this,  and  over  and  above  an  abund- 
ance of  comparatively  isolated  aphorisms,  there  is  the 
Philosopher's  running  exposition  of  Wilfrid  as  "  A 
Rider  on  Hippogriff,"  one  who,  because  he  travels  to 
Love  by  the  road  of  Sentiment,  finds  he  is  bestriding 
a  power  extraneous  to  himself.  "  The  sentimentalist," 
the  Philosopher  says,  "goes  on  accumulating  images 
and  hiving  sensations,  till  such  time  as  (if  the  stuff  be 
in  him)  they  assume  a  form  of  vitality  and  hurry  him 
headlong.  This  is  not  passion,  though  it  amazes  men 
and  does  the  madder  thing."  It  is  Hippogriff' s  practice 
to  catch  up  his  rider  into  mid-air,  not  however  in  order 
to  make  him  cup-bearer  among  the  celestials,  but  merely 
to  remove  him  from  all  influences  save  the  voice  of  his 
desire,  and  to  secure  a  sea  of  vapour  for  his  plungings. 
"  Another  peculiarity  of  this  animal  gifted  with  wings 
is,  that  around  the  height  he  soars  to  he  can  see  no 


SANDRA   BELLONI  77 

barriers  or  any  of  the  fences  raised  by  men.  And  here 
again  he  differs  from  Passion,  which  may  tug  against 
common  sense,  but  is  never  in  a  great  nature  divorced 
from  it."  True  Passion,  the  Philosopher  says,  is  "  Noble 
Strength  on  Fire"  ;  it  violates  no  law  ;  it  is  sane.  Con- 
stantly just  to  itself,  it  does  not  when  it  is  thwarted 
turn  and  rend  its  possessor.  "  Constantly  just  to  itself, 
mind  !  This  is  the  quality  of  true  passion.  Those  who 
make  a  noise,  and  are  not  thus  distinguishable  are  upon 
Hippogriff."  Hippogriff  is  "the  foal  of  Fiery  Circum- 
stance out  of  Sentiment."  Passion  and  Sentiment — it 
is,  Meredith  tells  us,  his  Philosopher's  purpose  to  work 
out  the  distinction  between  them.  "  All  I  wish,"  he 
humorously  adds,  "  is  that  it  were  good  for  my  market. 
What  the  Philosopher  means,  is  to  plant  in  the  reader's 
path  a  staring  contrast  between  my  pet  Emilia  and  his 
puppet  Wilfrid.  It  would  be  very  commendable  and 
serviceable  if  a  novel  were  what  he  thinks  it :  but  all 
attestation  favours  the  critical  dictum  that  a  novel  is  to 
give  us  copious  sugar  and  no  cane.  .  .  .  Such  is  the 
construction  of  my  story,  however,  that  to  entirely  deny 
the  Philosopher  the  privilege  he  stipulated  for  when 
with  his  assistance  I  conceived  it,  would  render  our  per- 
formance unintelligible  to  that  acute  and  honourable 
minority  which  consents  to  be  thwacked  with  aphorisms 
and  sentences  and  a  fantastic  delivery  of  the  verities. 
While  my  Play  goes  on,  I  must  permit  him  to  come  for- 
ward occasionally.  We  are  indeed  in  a  sort  of  partner- 
ship, and  it  is  useless  for  me  to  tell  him  that  he  is  not 
popular  and  destroys  my  chance." 

This  frank  avowal  of  the  intrusion  of  theory  cannot, 
we  feel,  have  been  very  difficult  to  Emilia's  creator,  who 
must  have  been  perfectly  aware  that  he  had  given  to 
her  and  to  Wilfrid  vitality  enough  to  fill  and  overflow 
the    Philosopher's    formulae.      Wilfrid,   as   opposed    to 


78  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Emilia,  may  serve  for  a  sentimentalist,  but  the  man  who 
charged  with  a  ball-riddled  white  umbrella  in  the  battle 
of  Novara,  and  suffered  degradation  and  insult  in  saving 
Emilia  and  her  husband  from  their  enemies,  is  some- 
thing greater  and  nobler  than  that.  Meredith's  earliest 
plea  for  our  patience  with  his  hero  has  been  quoted 
already.1  It  is  reiterated  even  more  solemnly  later, 
when  the  struggle  between  Wilfrid's  love  and  his  self- 
interest  has  really  begun.  "  The  two  men  composing 
most  of  us  at  the  outset  of  actual  life,"  he  says,  "  began 
their  deadly  wrestle  within  him,  both  having  become 
awakened.  If  they  wait  for  circumstance,  that  steady 
fire  will  fuse  them  into  one,  who  is  commonly  a  person 
of  some  strength  ;  but  throttling  is  usually  the  custom 
between  them,  and  we  are  used  to  see  men  of  murdered 
halves.  These  men  have  what  they  fought  for:  they 
are  unaware  of  any  guilt  that  may  be  charged  against 
them,  though  they  know  that  they  do  not  embrace  Life  ; 
and  so  it  is  that  we  have  vague  discontent  too  universal. 
Change,  O  Lawgiver  !  the  length  of  our  minority,  and  let 
it  not  end  till  this  battle  is  thoroughly  fought  out  in 
approving  daylight."  The  whole  family  of  Poles,  includ- 
ing their  father,  are  in  some  degree  imaginative  and 
therefore,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  subject  to  what 
in  this  connection  Meredith  terms  the  "  poetic  "  power. 
Wilfrid  is  most  markedly  so,  and  it  is  indeed  this  com- 
bination of  susceptibility  to  beauty,  with  want  of  unifica- 
tion and  endurance  of  feeling,  which  marks  him  out  as 
the  Philosopher's  prey.  His  susceptibility  to  beauty  is 
evident  enough.  Emilia  is  the  antithesis  of  his  precon- 
ceived ideal ;  yet  from  their  first  moment  of  meeting  she 
is  able  to  be  at  her  best,  to  breathe  and  expand,  in  his 
presence.  From  the  day  of  her  arrival  at  Brookfield  he 
is  her  constant  and  kindly  companion,  pitiful  even  when 

1  Chapter  v,  page  54. 


SANDRA   BELLONI  79 

his  sentiment  is  disturbed  by  revelation  of  her  past,  and 
he  has  to  listen  to  thrifty  regrets  in  regard  to  her  father's 
misuse  of  potatoes,  the  staple  food  of  her  family.  More 
delicate  tenderness  makes  itself  felt  on  their  walk  to 
Brookfield  together,  after  the  fight  between  Hillford  and 
Ipley,  when  he  shows  himself  as  capable  as  Emilia  of 
being  attuned  to  the  loveliness  of  earth.  "  A  pillar  of 
dim  silver  rain  fronts  the  moon  "  as  they  hurry  over  the 
common  away  from  the  riot.  Emilia's  head  is  bowed, 
and  Wilfrid  still  grasps  the  hand  by  which  he  has  drawn 
her  from  under  the  tent.  To  get  her  out  of  the  fray 
and  to  persuade  her  to  forsake  the  ruins  of  her  harp, 
Wilfrid  has  informed  her  that  he,  and  not  Mr.  Pericles, 
was  its  donor,  and  that  he  will  give  her  another.  But 
when  they  have  come  for  some  distance  and  he  sees 
that  Emilia  is  in  tears,  he  proposes  that  she  shall  wait  in 
a  cottage  near  by  while  he  returns  for  the  remains  of 
the  instrument.  It  is,  he  says,  possible  that  it  can  be 
mended.  "  Emilia  lifted  her  eyes.  '  I  am  not  crying 
for  the  harp.  If  you  go  back  I  must  go  with  you.' 
'  That's  out  of  the  question.  You  must  never  be  found 
in  that  sort  of  place  again.'  '  Let  us  leave  the  harp,' 
she  murmured.  '  You  cannot  go  without  me.  Let  me 
sit  here  for  a  minute.  Sit  with  me.'  She  pointed  to  a 
place  beside  herself  on  the  fork  of  a  dry  log  under 
flowering  hawthorn.  A  pale,  shadowy  blue  centre  of 
light  among  the  clouds  told  where  the  moon  was.  Rain 
had  ceased,  and  the  refreshed  earth  smelt  all  of  flowers, 
as  if  each  breeze  going  by  held  a  nosegay  to  their 
nostrils."  A  marked  change  has  come  over  Emilia ; 
"  her  voice  now,  even  in  common  speaking,  had  that 
vibrating  richness  which  in  her  singing  swept  his  nerves." 
"  How  brave  you  are!"  she  presently  exclaims,  and  all  his 
efforts  to  persuade  her  that  there  was  no  danger  in  the 
recent  struggle  prove  unavailing.     Wilfrid  falls  back  on 


80  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

the  statement  that  the  right  place  for  girls  is  at  home. 
" '  I  should  always  like  to  be  where  .  .  . '  Her  voice 
flowed  on  with  singular  gravity  to  that  stop."  Is  it 
possible  she  can  have  been  going  to  say  like  always  to 
be  where  he,  Wilfrid,  was  ?  The  question  is  put  more 
from  curiosity  than  anything  else  ;  for  as  yet  his 
emotions  are  languid.  "  To  her  soft  '  Yes,'  he  continues 
briskly,  and  in  the  style  of  condescending  fellowship  : 
'  Of  course  we're  not  going  to  part ! '  'I  wonder,'  said 
Emilia.  There  she  sat,  evidently  sounding  right  through 
the  future  with  her  young  brain,  to  hear  what  Destiny 
might  have  to  say."  Touched,  but  conscious  that  he 
has  now  heard  more  than  is  justifiable,  Wilfrid  makes  a 
last  effort  to  return  to  a  commonplace  level.  He 
reminds  Emilia  that  she  has  an  exaggerated  notion  of 
the  fight  in  the  booth,  and  that  what  honours  there  were 
in  her  rescue  he  shares  with  Captain  Gambier.  "  '  I  did 
not  see  him,'  said  Emilia.  '  Are  you  not  cold  ? '  he 
asked,  for  a  diversion,  though  he  had  one  of  her  hands. 
She  gave  him  the  other.  He  could  not  quit  them 
abruptly :  nor  could  he  hold  them  both  without  being 
drawn  to  her.  'What  is  it  you  say?'  Wilfrid  whispered. 
'  Men  kiss  us  when  we  are  happy.  Is  that  right  ?  and 
are  you  happy?'  She  lifted  a  clear,  full  face,  to  which 
he  bent  his  mouth.  Over  the  flowering  hawthorn  the 
moon  stood  like  a  wind-blown  white  rose  of  the  heavens. 
The  kiss  was  given  and  taken.  Strange  to  tell,  it  was 
he  who  drew  away  from  it  almost  bashfully,  and  with 
new  feelings."  Down  green  lanes  and  through  dim 
meadow  paths  their  way  is  continued,  till  they  come  to 
a  stream  distant  but  two  or  three  fields  from  Brookfield. 
Emilia  has  just  been  confessing  that,  earlier  in  the 
evening,  she  had  been  arranging  with  Captain  Gambier 
to  take  her  to  Italy.  The  brook  is  crossed  by  a  plank, 
and  as  they  come  to  it  Wilfrid  has  asked  her  when  she 


SANDRA    BELLONI  81 

is  starting,  adding,  in  reply  to  her  look,  "  with  Captain 
Gambier,  I  mean."  Emilia  gives  him  her  hand  to 
be  led  over,  and  answers,  as  she  comes  near  to  him, 
"  I  am  never  to  leave  you."  Her  trustfulness  subdues 
him  completely,  and  he  vows  that  she  shall  not.  But 
Brookfield  is  coming  in  sight,  and  to  confront  it  he  feels 
the  need  for  Emilia's  fascination  to  be  fully  exerted. 
He  bids  her  sing.  She  stops,  and  gathers  breath  twice, 
but  each  time  her  voice  breaks  on  the  note.  She 
cannot.  But  in  fear  of  his  anger  she  takes  his  hand  to 
beg  for  forgiveness.  "Wilfrid  locked  her  fingers  in  a 
strong  pressure,  and  walked  on,  silent  as  a  man  who  has 
faced  one  of  the  veiled  mysteries  of  life.  It  struck  a 
full  human  blow  on  his  heart,  dragging  him  out  of  his 
sentimental  pastures  precipitately.  He  felt  her  fainting 
voice  to  be  the  intensest  love-cry  that  could  be  uttered. 
The  sound  of  it  coursed  through  his  blood,  striking  a 
rare  illumination  of  sparks  in  his  not  commonly  brilliant 
brain."  Elsewhere  Wilfrid  is  spoken  of  as  one  of  the 
many  who  find  it  easier  to  pledge  themselves  to  eternity 
than  to  what  is  immediate.  To-night  he  and  Emilia 
hasten  onwards  to  Brookfield,  and  "  To-morrow  morn- 
ing "  is  all  he  can  say  at  their  parting. 

Merthyr  Powys  is  Meredith's  favourite  Welshman ; 
in  praise  of  his  character  nothing  further  needs  to 
be  said.  His  solicitude  for  Emilia  is  portrayed  in 
some  of  the  loveliest  incidents  of  the  book.  He  is,  he 
says,  never  at  a  loss  in  his  reading  of  Cymric  and 
Italian  natures,  and  Emilia,  he  boasts  to  his  sister 
Georgiana,  on  her  mother's  side  is  Welsh.  Emilia  says 
to  Georgiana,  whose  standard  of  behaviour  she  often 
fails  to  satisfy,  "  Merthyr  waits  for  me,"  adding  in  reply 
to  Georgiana's  question  as  to  why  she  did  not  earlier 
break  her  promise  to  Wilfrid,  "  I  could  not  see  through 
it  till  now."     And  in  this  statement  Merthyr's  bearing 

G 


82  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

throughout  Sandra  Belloni  and  Vittoria  is  epitomised. 
In  his  long  task  of  wooing  Emilia  back  to  life  and 
self-confidence,  after  she  is  recovered  from  starvation 
and  despair,  his  tenderness  is  unfailing.  He  plans  her 
dresses,  takes  her  to  balls,  flatters  her,  even,  to  awake  her 
pride.  Services  of  this  kind,  however,  are  but  the  mere 
surface  expression  of  his  feeling.  His  true  service  and 
inestimable  gift  to  Emilia  is  his  understanding  of  the 
range  and  possibilities  of  her  nature,  and  his  refusal 
to  respond  to  anything  but  her  best.  She  has  been 
told  by  Georgiana  that  Merthyr  loves  her  intensely; 
she  is  agitated  at  the  prospect  of  an  interview  with 
Wilfrid — the  first  since  she  was  ill— and  she  craves  a 
word  of  sustainment  from  Merthyr.  He  is  her  tutor, 
and  Wilfrid's  knock  is  heard  just  as  their  lessons  are 
at  an  end.  Emilia  moves  to  the  door  and  makes  an 
effort  to  go,  but  fear  overcomes  her;  she  turns  back  to 
Merthyr  and  kneels  at  his  feet  murmuring,  "  Say  some- 
thing to  me."  Merthyr  takes  her  hand  and  lets  his 
eyes  dwell  upon  hers.  "The  marvel  of  their  not 
wavering  or  softening  meaningly  kept  her  speechless. 
She  rose  with  a  strength  not  her  own  ;  not  comforted, 
and  no  longer  speculating.  It  was  as  if  she  had  been 
eyeing  a  golden  door  shut  fast,  that  might  some  day 
open,  but  was  in  itself  precious  to  behold." 

In  Tracy  Runningbrook  Meredith  allows  himself  a 
luxury,  albeit  a  luxury  that  is  delightful  to  his  readers. 
Having  created  Emilia,  he  wishes  to  free  himself  of  the 
limitations  of  prose,  and  convey  the  impression  she 
makes  on  the  sensitiveness  of  a  poet.  Merthyr  invites 
Tracy  to  stay  with  them  at  Monmouth,  and  be  Emilia's 
companion  when  she  is  recovering  from  an  illness  caused 
by  the  shock  of  Wilfrid's  desertion.  From  Monmouth 
Tracy  writes  letters  about  her.  "  As  to  ill-health,"  he 
replies   to  Wilfrid's  inquiries,  "  Great  Mother    Nature 


SANDRA   BELLONI  83 

has  given  a  house  of  iron  to  this  soul  of  fire.  The 
windows  may  blaze,  or  the  windows  may  be  extin- 
guished, but  the  house  stands  firm.  When  you  are 
lightning  or  earthquake  you  may  have  something  to 
reproach  yourself  for ;  as  it  is,  be  under  no  alarm." 
And  Tracy's  intense  sympathy  for  Emilia  is  the 
medium  through  which  we  are  shown  that  noteworthy 
scene  in  the  woods  on  a  night  of  frost  in  May,  when 
Emilia  proves  that  she  has  regained  her  voice. 

Lucy  Feverel  has  been  described  as  an  early  Victorian 
heroine.  The  description  is  inadequate,  but  the  measure 
of  its  truth  may  be  perceived  in  studying  her  successor. 
In  Emilia,  Meredith  has  given  us  his  greatest  of  soul. 
Close  to  Nature,  elemental — a  force  rather  than  a 
character — to  give  a  picture  of  Emilia  in  any  way  com- 
plete would  be  to  rewrite  her  story ;  she  can  only  be 
revealed  in  her  effect  upon  others.  In  touch  with 
poetry  and  passion  at  their  source,  she  will  only  make 
them  consciously  her  own  and  realise  their  interplay  upon 
life,  when  she  has  seen  herself  in  isolation  from  them. 
Her  difficulties  are  the  opposite  of  Wilfrid's,  by  whom 
the  loyalty  and  oneness  of  feeling  which  are  hers  by 
nature  are  to  be  acquired  only  through  much  pain  and 
sacrifice ;  power  of  soul,  and  the  capacity  to  concen- 
trate the  whole  of  her  physical  and  mental  vigour  upon 
a  single  emotion,  are  Emilia's  from  the  first.  She  has 
the  first  essential  of  artistic  achievement,  whole-hearted- 
ness.  She  knows  nothing  of  dallying  rivulets  or  shel- 
tered harbours ;  she  sails  in  mid-stream  in  the  hour  of 
stress  as  well  as  in  the  hour  of  triumph.  Her  force 
is  expansive,  but  has  she  the  power  of  vision  to  control 
it?  When  the  story  opens,  the  task  has  not  been 
attempted.  In  her  interview  with  Mr.  Pole  in  his  office 
we  are  introduced  to  what  Meredith  terms  Emilia's 
"  first  conflict  with  her  simplicity,  out  of  which  it  is  not 


84  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

to  issue  clear,  as  in  foregone  days  " ;  she  must  attempt 
to  see  the  character  of  him  she  is  speaking  to,  envisage 
his  standpoint  as  a  means  to  an  end,  and  her  con- 
sciousness of  the  necessity  marks  "  a  quality  going  and 
a  quality  coming,"  the  loss  and  the  gain  both  being 
a  law  of  her  growth.  And  her  author  comments  on  a 
transition,  even  more  marked,  at  the  point  when,  for- 
saken by  her  lover,  she  is  in  terror  of  losing  her  voice. 
She  stands  before  the  mirror  studying  her  dress  and 
her  face,  questioning  their  attractiveness  and  wondering 
how  it  may  be  enhanced.  "  The  one  Emilia,  so  un- 
questioning, so  sure,  lay  dead  ;  and  a  dozen  new  spirits, 
with  but  a  dim  likeness  to  her,  were  fighting  for  posses- 
sion of  her  frame,  now  occupying  it  alone,  now  in 
couples  ;  and  each  casting  grim  reflections  on  the  other. 
Which  is  only  a  way  of  telling  you  that  the  great 
result  of  mortal  suffering — consciousness — had  fully  set 
in  ;  to  ripen  ;  perhaps  to  debase ;  at  any  rate,  to  prove 
her."  Meredith's  philosophy  possibly  allows  too  little 
for  the  virtue  of  natures  who,  "  where  no  misgiving  is," 
rely  upon  their  unanalysed  instincts.  However  that 
may  be,  the  women  to  whom  his  admiration  is  given, 
one  and  all,  win  to  their  spiritual  independence  and 
rectitude  through  consciousness  of  the  conditions  which 
in  a  man-made  civilisation  their  womanhood  involves. 
Emilia,  humiliated,  craves  to  see  herself  of  worth  in  her 
friend's  eyes.  The  question,  as  Meredith  sees  it,  is — 
will  she  employ  her  merely  feminine  and  mercantile 
advantages,  trade  on  her  appearance,  or  will  she  deter- 
mine to  be  valuable  in  her  own  eyes,  model  herself 
from  within  outwards?  It  is  answered  in  Tracy 
Runningbrook's  letters  to  Wilfrid  after  her  illness, 
in  which  Emilia  is  described  as  perceiving  herself,  and 
even  her  power  of  love,  as  materials  to  be  moulded  to 
beauty,  instruments  to  be  tuned  and  harmonised.     And 


SANDRA    BELLONI  85 

this,  with  the  controlling  and  garnering  of  emotion 
implied  in  it,  is  the  keynote  of  Emilia's  development, 
sustained  till  the  close  of  Vittoria,  where  Meredith  can 
say  of  his  heroine,  "  Rarely  has  a  soul  been  so  subjected 
by  its  own  force.  She  certainly  had  the  image  of  God 
in  her  mind." 

As  has  already  been  said,  the  main  outlines  of 
Emilia's  character  will  not  lend  themselves  to  descrip- 
tion. But  minor  qualities  with  which  Meredith  endows 
her  enable  us  to  learn  much  of  his  views.  It  is,  he 
says,  characteristic  of  the  Fine  Shades,  the  Nice 
Feelings,  to  ignore  the  importance  of  money ;  con- 
sideration of  it  seems  to  them  to  savour  of  inferior 
circles  from  which  they  have  emerged.  Emilia,  on  the 
contrary,  thinks  its  value  real.  On  the  arrival  of  her 
harp  she  exclaims  to  the  sisters,  "  I  can't  guess  what  it 
cost,"  and,  showing  it  to  Wilfrid,  "See  what  Mr. 
Pericles  thinks  I  am  worth!"  And  this  attitude  is 
not  a  mere  result  of  her  poverty ;  she  maintains  it  to 
the  end  of  the  book.  She  writes  in  her  letter  to  Merthyr, 
when  she  is  starting  for  Milan,  that  payment  has  bound 
her  to  Pericles  for  three  years  to  come.  "  I  would,"  she 
writes,  "  break  what  you  call  a  Sentiment.  I  broke  my 
word  to  Wilfrid.  But  this  money  has  a  meaning  that 
I  cannot  conquer  !  You  would  not  wish  me  to."  And 
if  the  petty  actions  of  the  story  too  much  hinge  on 
questions  of  money,  the  subject  is  more  than  redeemed 
by  this  final  transaction  of  Emilia's,  coupled  as  it  is 
with  her  new  understanding  that  her  love  is  to  be  judged 
by  her  acts.  On  her  coming  to  Brookfield  we  are  told 
she  "  maintained  a  simple  discretion."  Wilfrid  may 
hear  all  he  cares  to  hear  of  her  life,  but  she  is  by  no 
means  willing  to  volunteer  information  to  his  sisters. 
And  this  quality  is  estimated  highly  by  her  author, 
who  substitutes  it  in   her  character   for   conventional 


86  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

rules  or  pretences.  The  Italian  patriot  Marini  says  of 
Emilia  :  "  She  is  half  man.  She  is  not  what  man  has 
made  of  her  sex,"  and  Meredith  emphasises  the  point. 
She  is  not,  for  instance,  at  all  overcome  by  Pericles' 
proposals  or  information  as  to  his  relations  with  women. 
In  one  sense  she  is  quite  at  his  mercy ;  yet,  when  he 
attempts  familiarity  in  action,  her  reply  is  fiery  enough 
to  compel  his  artistic  appreciation.  And  in  that  most 
remarkable  scene  between  Mr.  Pole  and  Emilia,  with 
its  masterly  study  of  nervous  collapse,  her  childishness 
and  power,  her  bluntness  and  delicacy,  find  fullest  ex- 
pression. She  goes  up  to  town  to  Mr.  Pole's  office  to 
plead  for  herself  and  for  Wilfrid.  Mr.  Pole  supposes 
she  has  come  on  his  daughter's  behalf  to  induce  him  to 
consult  with  a  doctor.  The  result  is  that  the  tragedy 
of  the  situation  is  heightened  by  one  of  those  humorous 
confusions  Meredith  delights  in.  Emilia  differs  so 
widely  from  woman  as  Mr.  Pole  knows  her  that  he 
finds  her  incalculable,  and  is  alternately  beguiled  and 
enraged  by  her  words.  Her  passion  is  intense,  and  she 
thinks  in  images  to  which  his  physical  sensitiveness 
cannot  be  deaf — prospect  of  division  from  Wilfrid  goes, 
she  says,  like  frost  through  her  bones  ;  her  heart  jerks 
as  if  it  had  to  pull  her  body  from  the  grave  each  time 
that  it  beats ;  if  he  slaughters  her  love  and  his  son's, 
what  chance  has  he  of  rest,  what  pity,  what  mercy, 
shall  his  sufferings  anywhere  find.  The  boon  Emilia 
demands,  it  is  out  of  Mr.  Pole's  power  to  grant ;  but  so 
great  is  her  influence  he  is  compelled  to  confess  to  her  the 
secret  he  guards  as  his  life.  And,  finally,  in  the  meeting 
with  Wilfrid  at  Wilming  Weir,  Emilia's  spiritual  destiny, 
her  place  in  the  innermost  of  feeling,  is  revealed.  Rank- 
ing with  the  lyric  loves  of  Richard  and  Lucy,  rapturous 
as  those  earliest  hours, "  By  Wilming  Weir  "  is  penetrated 
with  a  further,  a  still  more  delicate  beauty.    Emilia  and 


SANDRA   BELLONI  87 

Wilfrid  are  older  in  experience  than  Richard  and  Lucy, 
and,  though  Emilia  is  immature  and  uncomplex,  this, 
with  her  as  with  Carinthia,  is  due  rather  to  the  slow 
development  of  a  great  nature  than  to  dainty  innocence 
or  ordinary  simplicity  ;  for  she  has  known  hardship  and 
hunger  and  come  into  contact  with  evil.  The  influence 
which  possesses  her,  as  she  watches  from  the  darkening 
meadow  the  moon-rays  widening  on  the  churning 
waters  of  the  fall,  is  as  poignant  with  foreboding  as 
with  ecstasy.  "  The  fair  Immortal "  shone  on  Richard 
and  Lucy  "  young  as  when  she  looked  upon  the  lovers 
in  Paradise";  now  her  tide  is  at  the  flood,  red-gold 
with  the  power  and  passion  of  centuries.  Sound  and 
movement  encompass  Emilia,  till  her  art  once  more 
dominates  and  possesses  her  soul.  Later,  when  she 
has  agreed  to  abandon  Italy  and  her  profession,  for 
Wilfrid,  she  says  to  him,  "  Do  you  know  when  we  were 
silent  just  now,  I  was  thinking  that  water  was  the 
history  of  the  world  flowing  out  before  me,  all  mixed 
up  of  kings  and  queens,  and  warriors  with  armour,  and 
shouting  armies;  battles  and  numbers  of  mixed  people; 
and  great  red  sunsets,  with  women  kneeling  under  them  ? 
Do  you  know  those  long,  low  sunsets  ?  I  love  them. 
They  look  like  blood  spilt  for  love."  And  throughout 
the  scene  her  personal  passion  is  in  touch  with  some- 
thing wider  and  more  universal  than  itself.  Wilfrid, 
who  is  at  the  threshold  only  of  love,  is  engaged  in 
questioning  whether  his  courage  can  compass  the 
ordinary  human  endeavour  and  claim  for  his  wife  the 
girl  whom  he  recognises  as  coming  nearer  super- 
human nature  than  anything  he  knows.  Emilia,  on 
the  other  hand,  already  has  sight  of  a  more  command- 
ing ideal.  She  is  to  write  a  year  later  when  she  is 
leaving  England  for  Milan,  "  May  no  dear  woman  I 
know  ever  marry  the  man  she  first  loves."     The  atmo- 


88  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

sphere  of  this  scene  at  Wilming  Weir  has  much  in 
common  with  the  forty-seventh  poem  of  Modern  Love, 
with  which  its  imagery  presents  an  interesting  parallel. 
In  discussing  his  insistence  on  philosophical  and 
ethical  meanings  in  Sandra  Belloni,  Meredith  suggests 
a  distinction  in  method  between  that  book  and  its 
sequel  Vittoria.  Let  us,  he  pleads,  be  true  to  time 
and  place.  "  Here  in  our  fat  England,  the  gardener 
Time  is  playing  all  sorts  of  delicate  freaks  in  the  hues 
and  traceries  of  the  flower  of  life,  and  shall  we  not 
note  them?  If  we  are  to  understand  our  species,  and 
mark  the  progress  of  civilisation  at  all,  we  must." 
But  when  Emilia  is  in  Italy,  the  Philosopher  promises 
to  retire  altogether, — "  for  there  is  a  field  of  action,  of 
battles  and  conspiracies,  nerve  and  muscle,  where  life 
fights  for  plain  issues,  and  he  can  but  sum  results."  If 
we  accept  Sandra  Belloni  and  Vittoria  as  our  examples, 
it  is  difficult  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  the  field  of 
complex,  and  not  that  of  "  plain,"  issues,  is  the  field  of 
Meredith's  genius.  He  seems  not  to  possess  the  power 
of  exclusion  and  selection  required  for  a  novel  of  in- 
cident ;  life,  as  he  reads  it,  appears  too  involved  and 
discursive  for  events  to  preserve  their  necessary  se- 
quence. As  a  tale  the  book  is  ill-constructed,  or  rather 
it  is  not  constructed  at  all.  It  contains  passages  of 
narrative  and  description  which  Meredith  has  never 
surpassed,  but  it  is  not  a  story.  It  is  a  poet's  account 
of  a  great  movement  of  which,  though  a  poet,  he  has 
the  detailed  and  intimate  knowledge  of  an  historian, 
love  for  Italy  and  democratic  sympathies  having,  in 
his  case,  been  stimulated  by  special  experience.  Vittoria 
made  its  appearance  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for 
1866,  and  it  has  already  been  mentioned  that  at  that 
time  Meredith  was  acting  as  war -correspondent  in 
Venice.     The  first    chapter  introduces  us  to   Vittoria 


SANDRA   BELLONI  89 

in  conclave  with  half  a  dozen  leaders  of  the  movement 
for  Italian  Independence,  and  their  Chief.  She  is 
conceived  as  a  devoted  patriot  destined  by  Mazzini 
to  give  the  signal  for  the  rising  in  Milan.  Yet  she 
immediately  bewilders  us  by  inconsequent  actions.  Is 
it,  we  ask  ourselves,  credible  that  the  Vittoria  whom  we 
saw  half  an  hour  ago  dedicating  her  life  to  her  country, 
should  be  scattering  letters  and  messages  betraying 
the  plan  of  the  Rising?  Vittoria,  too,  is  Emilia 
matured,  and  these  actions  have  nothing  in  common 
with  what  we  know  of  Emilia.  She,  it  has  been  ad- 
mitted, could  be  unmindful  of  others  in  concentration 
on  her  central  emotion  ;  Lady  Charlotte's  feelings,  for 
instance,  hardly  existed  for  her  in  relation  to  Wilfrid. 
But  this  fault  is  at  the  opposite  pole  from  the  fault 
in  Vittoria.  What  other  matters  she  may  or  may  not 
recall  in  the  days  intervening  between  the  scene  on  the 
mountain  and  the  15th  in  Milan,  we  would  not  venture 
to  say ;  that  she  can  be  thrown  out  of  her  course  in 
respect  to  the  crowning  event  is  incredible. 

The  life  of  Vittoria  is  not  in  its  story,  but  in  its  most 
noble  dramatisation  of  certain  personages  and  events. 
Foremost  among  these  are  the  descriptions  of  Mazzini, 
which,  reprinted  in  The  Secularist  and  elsewhere,  under 
the  title  of  "Portrait  of  Mazzini"  and  "  Mazzini  and  Italy," 
remain  unrivalled.  "He  was,"  writes  Meredith,  "a  man 
of  middle  stature,  thin,  and  even  frail  ;  with  the  com- 
plexion of  the  student,  and  the  student's  aspect.  The 
attentive  droop  of  his  shoulders  and  head,  the  straining 
of  his  buttoned  coat  across  his  chest,  the  air  as  of  one 
who  waited  and  listened,  which  distinguished  his  figure, 
detracted  from  the  promise  of  other  than  contemplative 
energy,  until  his  eyes  were  fairly  seen  and  felt.  That 
is,  until  the  observer  became  aware  that  those  soft  and 
large,  dark  meditative  eyes  had  taken  hold  of  him.     In 


90  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

them    lay  no  abstracted    student's  languor,  no   reflex 
burning  of  a  solitary  lamp  ;  but  a  quiet,  grappling  force 
engaged  the  penetrating  look.     Gazing  upon  them,  you 
were  drawn  in  suddenly  among  the  thousand  whirring 
wheels  of  a  capacious  and  vigorous  mind,  that  was  both 
reasoning  and  prompt,  keen  of  intellect,  acting  through- 
out all  its  machinery,  and  having  all  under  full  com- 
mand :  an  orbed  mind,  supplying  its  own  philosophy, 
and  arriving  at  the  sword-stroke  by  logical  steps, — a 
mind  much  less  supple  than  a  soldier's  ;  anything  but 
the  mind  of  a  Hamlet.  .  .  .  He  saw  far,  and  he  grasped 
ends  beyond  obstacles  ;  he  was  nourished  by  sovereign 
principles  ;  he  despised  material  present  interests ;  and, 
as  I  have  said,  he  was  less  supple  than  a  soldier.     If 
the  title  of  idealist  belonged  to  him,  we  will  not  im- 
mediately decide  that  it  was  opprobrious.    The  idealised 
conception    of    stern    truths    played    about    his    head 
certainly  for  those  who  knew  and  who  loved  it.     Such 
a  man,  perceiving  a  devout  end  to  be  reached,  might 
prove  less  scrupulous  in  his  course,  possibly,  and  less 
remorseful,    than    revolutionary    Generals.      His    smile 
was  quite  unclouded,  and   came  softly  as  a  curve  in 
water.     It  seemed  to  flow  with,  and  to  pass  in   and 
out  of,  his  thoughts, — to  be  a  part  of  his  emotion  and 
his   meaning  when   it  shone  transiently  full.     For  as 
he  had   an   orbed   mind,  so  he  had   an  orbed   nature. 
The    passions  were   absolutely  in    harmony  with    the 
intelligence."     And   this  great   portrait,  surpassing   in 
fidelity  the  work  of  professed  historians  of  the  move- 
ment, is  equalled  in  insight  by  the  closing  lines  of  the 
Opera    which    Meredith    puts    into    the    mouth    of   his 
heroine  in  the  great  scene  at  La  Scala.     Vittoria  has 
taken   Milan  by  storm ;    throughout  this  last  act  her 
power  has  been  culminating  ;  the  opera  house  is  hushed 
as   for  a  veritable  death  scene,  while  she  gives  voice 


SANDRA    BELLONI  91 

to  the  lines  which  embody  the  creed  of  Young  Italy's 

c~*  v»  *  c 

Our  life  is  but  a  little  holding,  lent 

To  do  a  mighty  labour  :  we  are  one 

With  heaven  and  the  stars  when  it  is  spent 

To  serve  God's  aim  :  else  die  we  with  the  sun. 

Allusion  has  already  been  made  to  the  fact  that 
Vittoria  abounds  in  descriptions  of  natural  scenery  that 
are  among  the  most  beautiful  in  Meredith's  writing. 
The  energy  and  movement  of  the  duel  in  the  Stelvio 
Pass  command  universal  admiration.  And  Vittoria  in 
the  mountains  with  Merthyr,  bringing  the  whole  force 
of  her  character  to  hold  herself  poised  between  the  past 
and  the  future,  may  hardly  be  spoken  of  in  words  other 
than  Meredith's  own.  Here,  at  the  close  of  the  book, 
the  conflicting  elements  no  longer  remain.  We  are  face 
to  face  with  the  commanding  ideal,  the  great  destiny, 
foreshadowed  in  Sandra  Belloni;  and  in  it  everything  else 
is  absorbed.  Separation  between  Vittoria's  love  for  her 
husband  and  her  love  for  her  country  has  now  become 
impossible.  Circumstances  provided  these  conditions 
for  the  novelist,  but  he,  it  should  be  remembered,  pro- 
vided the  woman  to  match  them.  He  set  out  in 
Emilia  to  balance  and  combine  an  idealist  and  an 
artist,  and  make  both  perfect  in  a  woman ;  he  has 
merely  availed  himself  of  circumstances  the  most  likely 
to  unite  and  inflame  them.  Vittoria  in  pursuing  an 
ideal  has  not  had  to  turn  her  back  on  her  art  or  her 
personal  relations.  The  ideal  embraced  and  demanded 
them  both  ;  it  gathered  together  and  made  daily  de- 
mands on  all  parts  of  her  being.  It  was  high,  but  it 
was  not  remote.  And  response  to  these  daily  demands 
has  met  with  its  highest  reward.  She  has  learned  the 
meaning  of  those  words  of  Mazzini  she  sang  as  Camilla, 
"  There  is  an  end  to  joy ;  there  is  no  end  to  striving." 
She  has  contracted  the  habit  of  surrender ;  she  cannot 


92  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

be  robbed.  Merthyr  and  she  are  in  the  mountains 
seeking  her  husband,  and  they  are  likelier  to  find  him 
dead  than  alive : — "  Vittoria  read  the  faces  of  the 
mornings  as  human  creatures  have  tried  to  gather 
the  sum  of  their  destinies  off  changing  surfaces, — 
fair  not  meaning  fair,  nor  black  black,  but  either  the 
mask  upon  the  secret  of  God's  terrible  will ;  and 
to  learn  it  and  submit,  was  the  spiritual  burden  of 
her  motherhood,  that  the  child  leaping  with  her  heart 
might  live.  Not  to  hope  blindly,  in  the  exceeding 
anxiousness  of  her  passionate  love,  nor  blindly  to  fear  ; 
not  to  let  her  soul  fly  out  among  the  twisting  chances ; 
not  to  sap  her  great  maternal  duty  by  affecting  false 
stoical  serenity, — to  nurse  her  soul's  strength,  and  suckle 
her  womanly  weakness  with  the  tears  which  are  poison 
when  repressed  ;  to  be  at  peace  with  a  disastrous  world 
for  the  sake  of  the  dependent  life  unborn  ;  by  such  pure 
efforts  she  clung  to  God.  Soft  dreams  of  sacred  nuptial 
tenderness,  tragic  images,  wild  pity,  were  like  phantoms 
encircling  her,  plucking  at  her  as  she  went  ;  but  they 
were  beneath  her  feet,  and  she  kept  them  from  lodging 
between  her  breasts.  The  thought  that  her  husband, 
though  he  should  have  perished,  was  not  a  life  lost  if 
their  child  lived,  sustained  her  powerfully.  It  seemed 
to  whisper  at  times  almost,  as  it  were  Carlo's  ghost 
breathing  in  her  ears  :  '  On  thee  ! '  On  her  the  further 
duty  devolved  ;  and  she  trod  down  hope,  lest  it  should 
build  her  up  and  bring  a  shock  to  surprise  her  fortitude: 
she  put  back  alarm.  The  mountains  and  the  valleys 
scarce  had  names  for  her  understanding ;  they  were  but 
a  scene  where  the  will  of  her  Maker  was  at  work. 
Rarely  has  a  soul  been  so  subjected  by  its  own  force. 
She  certainly  had  the  image  of  God  in  her  mind." 
"  Not  to  let  her  soul  fly  out  among  the  twisting 
chances,"  to  Meredith  that  achievement  is  the  end  and 


SANDRA    BELLONI  93 

aim  of  man's  discipline.  Not  to  lose  the  capacities  for 
desire  and  aspiration,  but  to  control  and  subdue  them 
to  the  plot  of  earth  that  is  ours,  instead  of  being 
dragged  in  their  wake — such  is  his  reading  of  the  lesson 
of  life,  though  it  involves  to  him  as  to  Vittoria,  a  dis- 
burdening of  Hope  as  well  as  of  Fear. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

RHODA  FLEMING 

ID  HO  DA  FLEMING,  published  in  1865,  is  a  "plain  " 
tale,  concerned  primarily  with  persons  in  humble 
life.  From  his  choice  and  treatment  of  the  subject  one 
might  imagine  that  Meredith  had  determined  to  confute 
the  readiest  generalisation  of  his  critics,  a  generalisation 
that  has  indeed  been  suggested  in  the  preceding  chapter. 
At  any  rate  he  has  proved  here,  past  all  dispute,  his 
mastery  over  the  simpler  chords  of  human  emotion,  his 
power  to  reveal  tragic  heights  in  an  everyday  story 
without  any  loosening  of  hold  upon  reality.  Mr.  Le 
Gallienne  alludes  to  Rhoda  Fleming as  written  in  "Saxon 
simple  as  song,"  and  certainly  such  chapters  as  "Dahlia's 
Frenzy,"  and  "  When  the  Night  is  Darkest,"  for  directness 
and  intensity  of  feeling  and  expression  would  be  by  no 
means  easy  so  rival.  Rhoda  and  Dahlia  Fleming  are 
the  daughters  of  a  Kentish  working  farmer,  and  the 
opening  of  the  book  is  devoted  to  a  description  of  their 
mother's  skill  in  gardening,  and  their  early  days  on  the 
farm.  Reduced  to  its  framework,  the  story,  after  this,  is 
an  account  of  Dahlia's  visit  to  London,  her  seduction 
and  desertion  there  by  the  nephew  of  the  squire  of  her 
village,  and  Rhoda's  consequent  suffering.  A  good  deal 
of  course  is  told  of  Edward  Blancove — Dahlia's  lover — 
and  almost  as  much  of  his  cousin  Algernon,  and  of  their 
friends.  Algernon  Blancove,  a  typical  idiot  of  his 
class,  is  indeed  wearisome,  and  it  is  difficult  not  to  wish 

94 


RHODA   FLEMING  95 

that  we  had  heard  less  of  his  exploits.  But  these  per- 
sons of  superior  social  position  have  no  rivalry  with 
Dahlia  and  Rhoda ;  the  interest  is  centred  in  the 
sisters  and  in  their  experiences  throughout. 

Though  Rhoda  Fleming  gives  its  title  to  the  book,  it  is 
her  sister's  tragedy  that  is  the  supreme  event.  Our  first 
insight  into  Dahlia's  character  is  gained  from  her  letters. 
The  first  is  to  Edward  Blancove,  when  unexpectedly 
finding  Rhoda  at  her  lodgings,  she  has  dismissed  her 
lover  without  explanation  from  the  window.  The  letter 
is  delivered  to  Edward  next  morning  at  his  Inn  Chambers 
by  a  porter  who  says  that  two  young  ladies  have  left  it. 
The  writer's  abandonment  to  passion  acquires  its  sig- 
nificance from  what  it  reveals  of  the  intensity  of  her 
normal  relationship  to  Rhoda.  We  do  not  question  her 
outcries — she  has  wept  through  the  whole  of  the  night, 
she  moves  like  a  ghost,  her  life  is  unreal  till  she  hears  of 
Edward's  forgiveness — but  it  is  the  simple  background 
of  fact  she  recounts  that  make  these  what  they  are:  "  In 
my  bed  there  lay  my  sister,  and  I  could  not  leave  her, 
/  love  her  so.  I  could  not  have  got  downstairs  after 
seeing  her  there  ;  I  had  to  say  that  cold  word  and  shut 
the  window."  The  second  letter  is  written  some  months 
later  to  Rhoda,  who  has  returned  to  the  farm.  Dahlia 
says  she  is  leaving  England  that  day,  and  continues, 
"  I  must  not  love  you  too  much,  for  I  have  all  my  love 
to  give  to  my  Edward,  my  own  now,  and  I  am  his  trust- 
ingly for  ever.  But  he  will  let  me  give  you  some  of  it — 
and  Rhoda  is  never  jealous.  She  shall  have  a  great 
deal.  Only  I  am  frightened  when  I  think  how  immense 
my  love  is  for  him  ;  so  that  anything — everything  he 
thinks  right  is  right  to  me.  I  am  not  afraid  to  think  so. 
...  I  am  like  drowned  to  everybody  but  one.  We 
are  looking  on  the  sea.  In  half  an  hour  I  shall  have 
forgotten  the  tread  of  English  earth.     I  do  not  know 


96  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

that  I  breathe.  All  I  know  is  a  fear  that  I  am  flying, 
and  my  strength  will  not  continue.  That  is  when  I  am 
not  touching  his  hand.  There  is  France  opposite.  I 
shut  my  eyes  and  see  the  whole  country  but  it  is  like 
what  I  feel  for  Edward — all  in  dark  moonlight.  Oh!  I 
trust  him  so !  I  bleed  for  him.  I  could  make  all  my 
veins  bleed  out  at  a  sad  thought  about  him.  And  from 
France  to  Switzerland  and  Italy.  The  sea  sparkles 
just  as  if  it  said  'Come  to  the  sun':  and  I  am  going.  .  .  . 
Here  is  Edward.  He  says  I  may  send  his  love  to  you. 
Address : — Mrs.  Edward  Ayrton,  Poste  Restante,  Lau- 
sanne,  Switzerland.     P.S. — Lausanne  is  where -but 

another  time,  and  I  will  always  tell  you  the  history  of 
the  places  to  instruct  you,  poor  heart  in  dull  England. 
Adieu !  Good-bye,  and  God  bless  my  innocent  at  home, 
my  dear  sister.  I  love  her.  I  never  can  forget  her. 
The  day  is  so  lovely.  It  seems  on  purpose  for  us.  Be 
sure  you  write  on  thin  paper  to  Lausanne.  It  is  on  a 
blue  lake  :  you  see  snow  mountains,  and  now  there  is  a 
bell  ringing — kisses  from  me  !  we  start.  I  must  sign. 
— Dahlia."  In  spite  of  her  lover's  disloyalty  and  Mrs. 
Lovell's  machinations,  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  the 
writer  of  these  letters  as  being  argued,  or  arguing 
herself,  into  the  thought  of  marriage  with  anyone  but 
Edward.  But  one  of  the  most  masterly  traits  of  the 
book  is  the  use  to  which  Meredith  puts  his  understanding 
of  illness  in  Dahlia's  history.  What  physical  energy 
remains  to  her  after  her  fever  spends  itself  in  the  mere 
remembrance  and  revival  of  feeling  ;  she  has  no  surplus 
of  strength  to  formulate  arguments  or  to  refute  them. 
At  moments  she  flames  with  her  passion  ;  but  normally 
she  is  frozen  and  incapable  in  her  sister's  hands.  Rhoda 
has  always  been  the  stronger  in  character ;  now  she 
determines  what  position  is  to  be  taken,  and  takes  it  for 
Dahlia. 


RHODA   FLEMING  97 

Noble  and  convincing  as  Rhoda's  character  undoubt- 
edly is,  is  it  not  difficult  to  accept  the  whole  of  her 
action  in  compelling  Dahlia's  marriage  with  Sedgett? 
It  is  hardly  possible  not  to  feel  that  her  love  for  Dahlia 
would  have  revealed  the  situation  in  its  true  and  not  its 
conventional  aspect,  given  her  at  least  the  degree  of 
misgiving  Robert  experiences.  Her  conviction  that 
Dahlia  at  all  costs  must  be  "saved"  is  indeed  atone  with 
her  father's.  But  the  view  in  his  case  is  convincing 
mainly  because  it  is  masculine.  Our  credulity  too  is 
strained  by  the  choice  of  a  double-dyed  villain  for  the 
bridegroom,  even  though  his  courtship  is  kept  adroitly 
out  of  sight,  and  we  are  not  called  on  to  see  him  with 
Dahlia.  He  stands  to  the  Flemings  as  he  was  of 
course  intended  to  stand,  for  a  principle  ;  nevertheless, 
we  must  include  in  our  estimate  of  Mrs.  Lovell's 
character  her  knowledge  of  Sedgett,  and,  in  judging 
Edward,  we  have  to  remember  that  he  had  a  suspicion 
at  least  of  the  identity  of  the  man  into  whose  hands  he 
was  willing  that  Dahlia  should  fall. 

It  is  usual  to  remark  that  Meredith's  novels  owe  a 
good  deal  to  Richardson's.  But  the  suggestion  is  not 
commonly  explained  or  expanded,  and,  though  Sir 
Charles  Grandison  is  recalled  by  name  in  The  Ordeal  of 
Richard  Feverel,  it  is  not  in  a  very  serious  connection. 
The  immense  differences  between  Richardson's  novels 
and  Meredith's  need  not  be  dwelt  on,  nor  need  we  add 
that  any  likeness  suggested  must  be  qualified  by  seeing 
them  in  relation  to  their  periods.  It  is  said  that 
Richardson  came  to  recognise  variety  of  mind  among 
women  from  his  early  experiences  of  the  divergent 
desires  of  those  who  employed  him  to  write  their  letters. 
However  this  may  be,  his  women  are  more  worked  from 
within  outwards,  than  those  of  any  other  writer  of  his 
time.      Richardson    had   the  temerity  to  question  the 

H 


98  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

prevailing  conception  of  the  sex,  and  at  least  to  attempt 
an  answer  to  Mowbray's  astonished  outcry  over  Love- 
lace's grief  for  Clarissa  :  "  She  was  but  a  woman,  and 
what  was  there  in  one  woman  more  than  another  ?  "  It 
was,  in  fact,  only  because  Richardson's  feeling  for 
Clarissa  had  exalted  her  to  such  an  exceptional  position 
that  his  readers  were  induced  to  look  on  Lovelace's 
offer  of  reparation  as  anything  but  quixotic.  And 
Clarissa  in  spite  of  its  sermonising  has  much  in  com- 
mon with  Rhoda  Fleming.  Lovelace's  anguish  when  he 
realises  that  Clarissa's  soul  has  escaped  his  grasp,  that 
it  is  "  out  of  his  power  any  way  in  the  world  to  be  even 
with  her,"  is  closely  parallel  with  Edward's.  He  writes 
to  his  friend  of  Clarissa,  who  is  dying,  and  refuses  to  see 
him  or  to  entertain  his  offers  of  marriage :  "  Has  not 
her  triumph  over  me,  from  first  to  last,  been  infinitely 
greater  than  her  sufferings  from  me?  Would  the 
sacred  regard  I  have  for  her  purity,  even  for  her  personal 
as  well  as  intellectual  purity,  permit,  I  could  prove  this 
as  clear  as  the  sun.  Hence  it  is  that  I  admire  her  more 
than  ever,  and  that  my  love  for  her  is  less  personal,  as  I 
may  say  more  intellectual,  than  ever  I  thought  it  could  be 
to  woman."  And  Meredith  tells  us  of  Edward  when, 
after  Dahlia's  recovery  from  attempted  suicide,  he  is 
urging  her  to  marry  him  :  "  He  had  three  interviews 
with  Dahlia ;  he  wrote  to  her  as  many  times.  There 
was  but  one  answer  for  him  ;  and  when  he  ceased  to 
charge  her  with  unforgivingness,  he  came  to  the  strange 
conclusion  that  beyond  our  calling  a  woman  a  Saint 
for  rhetorical  purposes,  and  esteeming  her  as  one  for 
pictorial,  it  is  indeed  possible,  as  he  had  slightly  dis- 
cerned in  this  woman's  presence,  both  to  think  her 
saintly  and  to  have  the  sentiments  inspired  by  the 
over-earthly  in  her  presence."  A  certain  makeweight 
of  circumstance — rank,  abduction,  delicacy  of  health — 


RHODA    FLEMING  99 

is  thrown  into  the  scale  with  Richardson's  heroine  ;  but 
this  was  necessary  ballast  at  a  time  when  women,  what- 
ever they  may  be  to-day,  were  most  certainly  "  shamefully 
outweighed,"1  and  it  scarcely  lessens  his  achievement. 
Clarissa,  disowned  and  cast  out  by  her  family,  unmarried, 
dying,  is  spiritually  triumphant  and  supreme.  In 
Rhoda  Fleming  the  climax  is  similar,  though,  in  keeping 
with  her  circumstances,  Dahlia's  final  feeling  for  her 
lover  is  more  delicate  than  Clarissa's.  She  does  not 
proffer  Christian  charity  and  prayers  for  Edward's 
amendment ;  all  that  she  has  is  his.  But  her  life  has 
been  robbed  of  capacity  for  love  or  joy.  In  Clarissa's 
case  death  is  the  final  note ;  the  tragedy  could  go  no 
farther.  In  Dahlia's  it  would  have  been  inadequate,  an 
evasion  of  the  tragedy.  Her  story,  more  delicate,  more 
poignant,  asks  death  in  life  as  its  end.  "  She  lived 
seven  years  her  sister's  housemate,  nurse  of  the  growing 
swarm.  She  had  gone  through  fire,  as  few  women 
have  done  in  like  manner,  to  leave  their  hearts  among 
the  ashes ;  but  with  that  human  heart  she  left  regrets 
behind  her.  The  soul  of  this  young  creature  filled  its 
place.  It  shone  in  her  eyes  and  in  her  work,  a  lamp  in 
her  little  neighbourhood  ;  and  not  less  a  lamp  of  cheer- 
ful beams  for  one  day  being  as  another  to  her.  When 
she  died  she  relinquished  nothing.  Others  knew  the  loss." 
Farmer  Fleming,  the  impassive  countryman,  appar- 
ently incapable  of  passion  and  not  responsive  to  any 
ordinary  stimulus,  is  in  one  sense  the  greatest  character 
in  the  book.  In  his  wife's  lifetime  he  was  indeed  shown 
capable  of  that  small  degree  of  feeling  required  to  nurse 
a  grievance.  He  thought  of  her  as  extravagant  (for 
which  he  may  be  pardoned,  since  she  was  so),  and 
bitterly  resented  her  suggestion  that  he  should  give  up 
the  farm,  on  which  he  was  losing,  and  join  her  in  con- 

1  The  Sage  Enamoured. 


ioo  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

verting  her  flourishing  flower-garden  (she  requisitioned 
manure  from  the  farmyard)  into  a  commercial  under- 
taking. But  his  dumbness  was  such  that,  except  in 
regard  to  this  unimportant  practical  change,  she 
managed  him  to  the  end,  and  died  unaware  of  his 
resentment.  Yet  from  the  moment  Dahlia's  letter 
arrives  announcing  her  marriage,  but  giving  no  sur- 
name, he  is  roused  and  implacable.  We  see  him  only 
in  occasional  and  isolated  acts,  but  we  feel  the  weight 
of  the  force  that  operates  in  him.  Instincts  and  tradi- 
tions of  generations  are  finding  a  voice.  The  "  respect- 
ability "  Dahlia  has  forfeited,  and  which  is  miraculously 
offered  to  her  again,  is  to  him  a  thing  as  little  to  be 
questioned  as  the  forces  of  nature.  He  epitomises  the 
awfulness  of  stupidity,  blind  impulse  not  amenable  to 
reason.  But  he  is  a  figure  none  the  less  heroic  because 
pitiless  and  cruel — a  figure  representing  much  more 
than  itself,  and  the  very  keynote  of  the  tragedy.  For 
Meredith's  insight  makes  clear  to  us  here,  as  in  One  of 
our  Conquerors,  that  the  force  Dahlia  and  Nataly  oppose 
has  accumulated  through  ages,  and  though  it  appears  to 
find  its  earliest  expression  in  their  criticism  by  others, 
has  its  final  stronghold  in  the  instincts  of  the  rebels 
themselves.  Thus  the  colossal  proportions  of  the 
power  with  which  the  individual  is  at  war  demand  for 
their  artistic  embodiment  something  approaching  an 
heroic  background,  and  in  contemporary  life  this  is 
most  easily  obtainable  in  a  drama  set  amid  primitive 
people.  The  same  forces  operate  in  higher  grades  of 
society,  but  there  they  are  so  differentiated  and  divided 
against  themselves  that  they  produce  their  impression 
only  fragmentarily  and  in  separated  voices.  And  here, 
perhaps,  is  the  reason  why  in  this  respect  One  of  our 
Conquerors,  with  all  its  subtlety  and  beauty,  sinks  by  the 
side  of  Rhoda  Fleming  to  little  more  than  a  tractate. 


CHAPTER   IX 
MEREDITH   AS    REVIEWER   AND   CRITIC 

THE  Essay  on  Comedy,  while  it  assures  Meredith's 
position  in  the  front  rank  of  literary  critics,  has 
tended  inevitably  to  dwarf  the  importance  of  his  other 
critical  work.  His  articles  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for 
1868  have  been  alluded  to  already,  and  it  may  be 
valuable  to  consider  these  in  some  detail  ;  for  they  are 
eminently  characteristic  of  his  sympathetic  and  pains- 
taking attitude  towards  comparatively  unknown  authors 
among  his  contemporaries. 

In  the  January  number  of  the  Review  he  warmly 
hails  Myers'  Saint  Paul  as  a  noble  poem,  worthy  of  its 
theme  and  strikingly  in  contrast  with  the  common  run 
of  religious  verse  ;  he  examines  the  foundations  of  its 
success,  and  pays  a  high  tribute  to  its  workmanship. 
In  February  he  reviews  the  Countess  of  Brownlowe's 
Reminiscences  from  1802  to  1815,  a  book  which  in  one 
sense  is  not  literature  and  contributes  nothing  to  history, 
but  is  full  of  vivid  human  impressions  of  personages 
and  events,  and  therefore,  it  need  hardly  be  said, 
valuable  in  Meredith's  eyes.  Its  chief  interest  for  us  is 
that  it  affords  its  reviewer  an  opportunity  to  reply  to 
some  of  the  author's  strictures  on  Frenchwomen  and 
their  manners.  It  appears  that  the  Countess  of 
Brownlowe  was  in  Paris  with  Lady  Castlereagh  when 
that  lady  received  a  ceremonial  visit  from  the  Duchesse 
de  Courlande  and  her  daughter,  Madame  de  Perigord, 

101 


102  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

afterwards  Duchesse  de  Dino  and  Talleyrand's  right 
hand  in  London.  The  Countess  describes  Madame  de 
Perigord  as  highly  rouged  and  dressed  in  a  pink  gown, 
with  roses  on  her  head,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
she  is,  so  Lady  Castlereagh  is  informed  by  the  mother, 
in  grief  for  the  loss  of  her  child  ;  all  of  which  makes 
clear  to  the  Englishwomen  that  these  ladies  are  no 
better  than  they  should  be,  and  causes  them  to  moralise 
on  the  curious  company  those  who  move  in  diplomatic 
circles  are  sometimes  obliged  to  keep.  Meredith  com- 
ments :  "  Madame  de  Perigord  was  simply  fulfilling 
what  she  conceived  to  be  a  public  duty.  She  had  to 
pay  a  visit,  and  she  did  not  choose — for  it  is  not  the 
habit  of  the  country — to  affect  the  eyes  of  others  by 
presenting  herself  sombrely  clad.  Frenchwomen  are,  to 
say  the  least,  as  tender-hearted  mothers  as  English- 
women. She  may  have  been  Hen  triste  for  the  loss  of 
the  child  in  spite  of  her  rouge  ;  nay,  coming  of  a 
provident  race,  she  may  even  on  that  occasion  have 
thought  it  advisable  to  lay  on  an  extra  dab  of  her 
artificial  bloom,  not  supposing  that  she  violated  any 
laws  of  decency,  but  supposing  quite  the  reverse.  Why 
should  she  wear  a  suffering  heart  on  her  sleeve? 
Frenchwomen  hold  our  obtrusion  of  heavy  mourning 
into  society  to  be  an  offence,  a  selfish  insistence  on 
private  grief,  evincing  absolute  want  of  consideration 
for  others ;  in  short,  a  piece  of  our  national  bad 
breeding."  Although  this  is  not  literary  criticism,  it 
seemed  pardonable  in  view  of  Meredith's  well-known 
admiration  for  France  and  French  literature,  to  note  in 
passing  a  championship  so  characteristic  of  its  author. 
In  May,  he  reviews  Mcrivales  Translation  of  the  Iliad 
into  English  Rhymed  Verse,  and  estimates  it  highly.  It 
is,  he  says,  "  a  rendering  capable  of  declamation,  as 
every  true  version  of  Homer  must  be."     In  June,  he 


CRITIC   AND    REVIEWER  103 

provides,  in  the  form  of  a  fifteen-page  review  of  Robert 
Lyttoris  Poems,  what  is  practically  an  essay  on  verse- 
writing.  Lytton,  he  remarks,  occupies  a  position  far 
enough  removed  from  the  eminence  of  Tennyson  and 
Browning  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  fledgling  author  on 
the  other,  to  be  a  fit  subject  for  criticism  and  advice  ; 
and  it  should  be  the  reviewer's  object  to  discover  and 
reveal  to  the  public  the  nature  of  any  promise  of  great 
and  good  work  in  writers  who  have  achieved  this  mid- 
way position.  He  protests  against  summary  methods 
which  too  often  dispose  of  young  writers'  work  on  mere 
grounds  of  distaste.  "  We  have  not,"  he  exclaims,  "  so 
many  men  of  genius  or  of  cleverness  who  are  anxious 
to  build  up  a  name  in  letters  that  it  is  necessary  to  turn 
an  amazed  frown  on  them  when  they  produce  an 
ambitious  book  not  quite  after  the  prevailing  fashion  ; 
nor  is  our  modern  literature  so  rich  in  good  things  that 
we  can  afford  to  leave  its  growth  to  the  fatness  of 
the  soil,  and  cherish  only  what  delights  a  dilettante 
appetite.  Goethe  held,  even  in  Germany,  that  art 
should  be  cultivated.  The  defenders  of  such  literary 
gateways  as  we  possess  resemble  too  often  the  old 
Austrian  out-station  gendarmes,  who  frequently  used  to 
examine  a  passport  by  reading  it  upside  down,  and 
then  declare  it  imperfect  and  unsatisfactory."  Never- 
theless Meredith  frankly  bewails  the  number  and  speed 
of  Lytton's  verse  publications.  All  hasty  publication 
he  regards  as  an  evil,  but  an  evil  in  which  there  are 
recognisable  degrees.  "  Prose,"  he  writes,  "  is  always 
ready  to  satiate  the  appetite  for  labour :  prose  travels 
to  limbo  without  a  shriek.  The  road  is  wide  for  it  in 
that  direction.  Prose  strengthens  the  hand.  It  does 
not  of  necessity  call  up  fictitious  sentiments  to  inflate 
a  conception  run  to  languor.  I  allude  especially  to  the 
habit  of  producing  numberless  minor  poems  of  purely 


104  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

sentimental  subjects.  A  large  and  noble  theme  has  a 
framework  that  yields  as  much  support  as  it  demands. 
Lyrics  yield  none  ;  and  when  they  are  not  spontaneous 
they  rob  us  of  a  great  deal  of  our  strength  and 
sincerity.  If  they  are  true  things,  coming  of  a  man's 
soul,  they  are  so  much  taken  from  him ;  if  the  reverse, 
they  hurry  him.  There  should  not  be  such  a  thing  as 
the  habit  of  lyrical  composition.  This  effusion  of  song 
is  not  natural  to  us.  The  greatest  of  lyrists  have  the 
power  but  rarely,  and  if  they  published  songs  and  odes 
and  snatches  only,  their  works  would  be  remarkably 
contracted.  In  a  stimulating  season,  when  prompted  by 
the  passions  of  youth  or  of  a  generous  sympathy,  they 
give  abundance,  but  that  abundance  does  not  make 
volumes — at  least,  not  publishable  volumes.  A  great 
lyrist  (and  we  have  one  among  us),  inflamed  by  the 
woes  of  an  unhappy  people  throbbing  for  fullness  of 
life  and  freedom,  sings  perforce ;  but  he  has  a  great 
subject,  and  we  do  not  see  that  it  is  his  will  which 
distinctly  predominates  in  his  verses.  Shelley's  lyrical 
pieces  are  few,  considering  the  vigour  of  his  gift  of 
song  ;  and  so  are  those  of  Burns  and  of  Campbell  and 
Hood.  Heinrich  Heine  added  a  new  element  to  his 
songs  and  ballads  :  an  irritant  exile  breathed  irony  into 
them  and  shaped  them  into  general  form  and  signifi- 
cance. He  is  the  unique  example  of  a  man  who  made 
himself  his  constant  theme,  and  he  pursued  it  up  to  the 
time  he  was  rescued  from  his  '  mattrass  grave.'  By 
virtue  of  a  cunning  art  he  caused  it  to  be  interesting 
while  he  lived.  I  feel  the  monotony  of  it  begin  to  grow 
on  me  often  now  when  I  take  up  the  Buck  der  Liedery 
the  Neuer  Friihling,  and  the  Romanzero.  Goethe's 
songs  were  the  fruits  of  a  long  life.  He  tells  us  how 
they  sprang  up  in  him,  and  I  do  not  doubt  of  his  sing- 
ing as  the  birds  sing ;  but  without  irreverence  it  may 


CRITIC   AND    REVIEWER  105 

be  said  that  in  many  cases  this  was  merely  a  self- 
indulgent  mood  to  which  German  verse  allured  the 
highest  of  German  poets.  I  love  the  larger  number  of 
them  for  his  sake,  not  for  their  own.  The  Tuscan 
Giusti,  one  of  the  finest  of  modern  lyrists,  published 
very  little.  Alfred  de  Musset's  songs,  all  of  them 
exquisite,  might  be  comprised  in  half  a  dozen  pages  of 
this  review.  In  fact,  it  is  from  observation  or  medita- 
tion that  poetry  gets  sinew  and  substance,  and  the 
practice  of  observing  or  meditating  soon  tames  in  poets 
the  disposition  to  pour  out  verses  profusely." 

As  it  obviously  is  impossible  to  quote  more  than 
a  paragraph  here  and  there  from  Meredith's  critical 
writings,  it  has  appeared  most  to  the  purpose  to  select 
such  as  bear  recognisably  on  his  own  practice,  or  on 
theories  he  has  formulated  elsewhere.  In  April,  1880, 
he  wrote  to  James  Thomson  :  "  My  friends  could  tell 
you  that  I  am  a  critic  hard  to  please.  They  say  that 
irony  lurks  in  my  eulogy."  And  he  has  lately  said1 
that  he  thinks  reviewers,  even  those  of  The  Times 
Literary  Supplement,  are  becoming  slightly  too  urbane, 
and  has  observed  regretfully,  "  Almost  all  men  imagine 
they  can  write  a  novel."  Yet  Meredith's  intense 
interest  in  the  work  of  young  writers  and  journalists 
is  a  constant  subject  of  remark  with  his  friends,  and 
wherever  and  whenever  he  discovers  force  and  reality 
his  praise  is  unstinted.  Proof  of  a  fact  so  generally 
acknowledged  is  unnecessary,  but,  if  it  were  needed, 
attention  might  be  drawn  to  his  review  of  Mrs.  Mey- 
nelVs  Essays?  and  the  remainder  of  the  letter  to  James 
Thomson.  "  I  am  not,"  he  continues,  "  frequently 
satisfied  by  verse.  But  I  have  gone  through  your 
volume,  and  partly  a  second  time,  and  I  have  not  found 

1  Daily  Chronicle,  July  5th,  1904. 

2  The  National  Review,  August,  1896. 


106  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

the  line  I  would  propose  to  recast.  I  have  many  pages 
that  no  other  English  poet  could  have  written.  No- 
where is  the  verse  feeble,  nowhere  is  the  expression 
insufficient ;  the  majesty  of  the  line  has  always  its  full 
colouring  and  marches  under  a  banner.  And  you 
accomplish  this  effect  with  the  utmost  sobriety,  with 
absolute  self-mastery.  I  have  not  time  at  present  to 
speak  of  the  City  of  Melancholia.  There  is  a  massive 
impressiveness  in  it  that  goes  beyond  Durer,  and  takes 
it  into  the  upper  regions  where  poetry  is  the  sublima- 
tion of  the  mind  of  man,  the  voice  of  our  highest."- 

But  enlightening  as  a  summary  of  Meredith's  re- 
views and  critical  writings  undoubtedly  would  be, 
standing  alone  it  must  fail  to  reveal  the  heart  of  the 
matter  ;  for  the  most  delightful  and  penetrating  of  his 
criticism  is  scattered  incidentally  in  the  pages  of 
his  novels.  This,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  is  modified  to 
some  extent  by  the  characters  who  voice  it,  but  it 
carries  always  an  undercurrent  at  least  of  its  writer's 
opinion.  His  first  contains  that  noteworthy  passage  in 
which  Lady  Blandish  gives  Sir  Austin  her  impressions 
of  the  authors  he  has  asked  her  to  study.  "  I  cannot," 
she  says,  "  get  on  with  Gibbon.  I  dislike  the  sneering 
essence  of  his  writings.  I  keep  referring  to  his  face, 
until  the  dislike  seems  to  become  personal.  How 
different  is  it  with  Wordsworth !  And  yet  I  cannot 
escape  from  the  thought  that  he  is  always  solemnly 
thinking  of  himself  (but  I  do  reverence  him).  But  this 
is  curious  ;  Bryon  was  a  greater  egotist,  and  yet  I  do 
not  feel  the  same  with  him.  He  reminds  me  of  a 
beast  of  the  desert,  savage  and  beautiful ;  and  the 
former  is  what  one  would  imagine  a  superior  donkey 
reclaimed  from  the  heathen  to  be,  a  very  superior 
donkey,  I  mean,  with  great  power  of  speech  and  great 
natural  complacency,  and  whose  stubbornness  you  must 


CRITIC   AND    REVIEWER  107 

admire  as  part  of  his  mission.  The  worst  is  that 
no  one  will  imagine  anything  sublime  in  a  superior 
donkey,  so  my  simile  is  unfair  and  false."1  To  the  last 
sentence  we  may  add  as  a  footnote  that  most  naive  and 
delightful  of  Meredith's  self-criticisms  :  "  This  simile 
says  more  than  I  mean  it  to  say,  but  those  who  under- 
stand similes  will  know  what  is  due  to  them."2  We 
quoted  earlier  Meredith's  famous  championship  of 
metaphor  in  relation  to  the  character  of  Dudley 
Sowerby.3  His  distinctions  between  one  kind  of  meta- 
phor and  another  are  most  illuminating.  In  Diana  of 
the  Crossways  Lady  Dunstane  is  made  to  object  to  the 
auctioneer's  advertisement  of  her  ancestral  home  as 
phrased  in  "  the  plush  of  speech  " ;  and  insists  on  its 
withdrawal.  In  describing  the  situation  of  the  house, 
Meredith  has  himself  just  spoken  of  the  smoke  above 
London  in  the  distance  as  "  the  ever-flying  banner  of 
the  metropolis."  "  Withdraw  we  likewise,"  says  Mere- 
dith, " '  banner  of  the  metropolis.'  That  '  plush  of 
speech '  haunts  all  efforts  to  swell  and  illuminate  citizen 
prose  to  a  princely  poetic."4  Alvan  in  the  Tragic 
Comedians  speaks  of  the  Jews  as  a  "  parable  people,"  a 
race  that  has  no  dislike  of  metaphor :  "  Provided 
always  that  the  metaphor  be  not  like  the  meta- 
physician's treatise  on  nature  :  a  torch  to  see  the  sun- 
rise !  "5 

Diana  of  the  Crossways  contains  an  exhaustive  ex- 
position of  Meredith's  theories  of  his  art :  the  opening 
chapter  on  "  Diaries  and  Diarists  "  is  mainly  a  defence  of 
them.  "  Be  wary  of  the  dis-relish  of  brain-stuff.  You 
must  feed  on  something.    Matter  that  is  not  nourishing 

1  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Fever  el,  chapter  xxiii. 

2  Sandra  Belloni,  chapter  xvm. 

3  One  of  Our  Conquerors,  chapter  XXVI. 

4  Diana  of  the  Crossways,  chapter  I. 

5  The  Tragic  Comedians,  chapter  I  v. 


io8  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

to  brains  can  help  to  constitute  nothing  but  the  bodies 
that  are  pitched  on  rubbish  heaps.  Brain-stuff  is  not 
lean  stuff;  the  brain-stuff  of  fiction  is  internal  history, 
and  to  suppose  it  dull  is  the  profoundest  of  errors."1 
Diana,  the  novelist,  in  attempting  to  describe  Percy 
Dacier  to  Emma,  says,  "  I  may  tell  you  his  eyes  are 
pale-blue,  his  features  regular,  his  hair  silky,  brownish, 
his  legs  long,  his  head  rather  stooping  (only  the  head), 
his  mouth  commonly  closed  :  these  are  the  facts,  and 
you  have  seen  much  the  same  in  a  nursery  doll.  Such 
literary  craft  is  of  the  nursery.  So  with  landscapes. 
The  art  of  the  pen  (we  write  on  darkness)  is  to  rouse 
the  inward  vision,  instead  of  labouring  with  a  Drop- 
scene  brush,  as  if  it  were  to  the  eye  ;  because  our  flying 
minds  cannot  contain  a  protracted  description.  That 
is  why  the  poets,  who  spring  imagination  with  a  word 
or  phrase,  paint  lasting  pictures.  The  Shakespearian, 
the  Dantesque,  are  in  a  line,  two  at  most."2  But  in  the 
Tragic  Comedians  a  claim  is  made  for  fiction,  shorter, 
but  even  more  powerful,  than  anything  to  be  found  in 
Diana.  Alvan  asks  Clotilde  what  she  has  been  reading  : 
"  Oh,  light  literature — poor  stuff,"  is  her  reply.  "  When 
we  two  read  together,"  he  says,  "  you  will  not  say  that. 
Light  literature  is  the  garden  and  the  orchard,  the 
fountain,  the  rainbow,  the  far  view  ;  the  view  within  us 
as  well  as  without.  Our  blood  runs  through  it,  our 
history  in  the  quick.  The  Philistine  detests  it,  because 
he  has  no  view,  out  or  in.  The  dry  confess  they  are 
cut  off  from  the  living  tree,  peeled  and  sapless,  when 
they  condemn  it.  The  vulgar  demand  to  have  their 
pleasures  in  their  own  likeness — and  let  them  swamp 
their  troughs !  they  shall  not  degrade  the  fame  of 
noble  fiction.     We  are  the   choice  public,  which  will 

1  Diana  of  the  Crossways,  chapter  I. 

2  /did.,  chapter  XV. 


CRITIC   AND   REVIEWER  109 

have  good  writing  for  light  reading.  Poet,  novelist, 
essayist,  dramatist,  shall  be  ranked  honourably  in  my 
Republic.  I  am  neither,  but  a  man  of  law,  a  student 
of  the  sciences,  a  politician,  on  the  road  to  government 
and  statecraft  :  and  yet  I  say  I  have  learnt  as  much 
from  light  literature  as  from  heavy — as  much,  that  is, 
from  the  pictures  of  our  human  blood  in  motion  as  from 
the  clever  assortment  of  our  forefatherly  heaps  of 
bones.  Shun  those  who  cry  out  against  fiction  and 
have  no  taste  for  elegant  writing.  For  to  have  no 
sympathy  with  the  playful  mind  is  not  to  have  a  mind  : 
it  is  a  test."1  To  Alvan,  the  reformer,  poetry,  though 
he  aspires  to  take  it  seriously,  is  as  light  as  any  other 
kind  of  literature.  The  closing  sentence  of  the  letter 
to  James  Thomson  quoted  above,  and  our  chapters  on 
the  poems,  will  suggest  that  Meredith  himself  took 
a  different  view  of  it.  But  there  is  a  passage  in  Sandra 
Belloni  in  which,  through  the  mouth  of  his  heroine,  he 
makes  a  criticism  of  one  of  the  lighter  aspects  of  the 
Ars  Poetica.  "  You  do  not  care  for  verse,"  says  Sir 
Purcell  to  Emilia.  "Poetry?"  she  replies;  "no,  not 
much.  It  seems  like  talking  on  tiptoe  ;  like  animals  in 
cages  ;  always  going  to  one  end  and  back  again.  .  .  ." 
"  And  making  the  same  noise  when  they  get  at  the  end 
— like  the  bears."  Sir  Purcell  slightly  laughed.  "  You 
don't  approve  of  the  rhymes  ? "  "  Yes,  I  like  the 
rhymes ;  but  when  you  use  words — I  mean,  if  you  are 
in  earnest — how  can  you  count  and  have  stops,  and — 
no,  I  do  not  care  anything  for  poetry."2  Emilia's  prob- 
lem is  certainly  far-reaching. 

In  the  Essay  on  Comedy  Meredith  has  proved  to  the 
full  his  power  of  forming  complete  and  delicate  literary 
estimates.     Elsewhere  his  allusions  to  the  masters  of 

1  The  Tragic  Comedians,  chapter  vi. 

2  Sandra  Belloni,  chapter  xxxvm. 


no  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

literature  are  chiefly  of  the  kind  that  "  spring  imagina- 
tion with  a  word  or  phrase."  Richmond  Roy's  most 
excellent  fooling  with  "  Great  Will  " 1  falls  in  its  place 
in  a  subsequent  chapter.  In  The  Tragic  Comedians 
Clotilde  introduces  herself  to  Alvan  in  a  discussion  on 
Hamlet.  Her  view  is  "mad  from  the  first";  Alvan's 
"  he  was  born  bilious  ;  he  partook  of  the  father's  consti- 
tution, not  the  mother's.  High-thoughted,  quick-nerved 
to  follow  the  thought,  reflective,  if  an  interval  yawned 
between  his  hand  and  the  act,  he  was  by  nature  two- 
minded  :  as  full  of  conscience  as  a  nursing  mother  that 
sleeps  beside  her  infant : — she  hears  the  silent  beginning 
of  a  cry.  Before  the  ghost  walked  he  was  an  elemen- 
tary hero  ;  one  puff  of  action  would  have  whiffed  away 
his  melancholy.  After  it  he  was  a  dizzy  moraliser, 
waiting  for  the  winds  to  blow  him  to  his  deeds — or  out. 
The  apparition  of  his  father  to  him  poisoned  a  sluggish 
run  of  blood,  and  that  venom  in  the  blood  distracted 
a  head  steeped  in  Wittenberg  philosophy.  With  meta- 
physics in  one  and  poison  in  the  other,  with  the  outer 
world  opened  on  him  and  this  world  stirred  to  con- 
fusion, he  wore  the  semblance  of  madness,  he  was 
throughout  sane ;  sick,  but  never  with  his  reason  de- 
throned." 2  Alvan's  talk  with  Clotilde  is  of  statesmen, 
of  European  politics,  of  literatures  ancient  and  modern. 
They  capped  verses  of  "  the  incomparable  Heinrich — 
lucid  metheglin,  with  here  and  there  no  dubious  flavour 
of  acid,  and  a  lively  sting  in  the  tail  of  the  honey. 
Sentiment,  cynicism,  and  satin  impropriety  and  scabrous, 
are  among  those  verses,  where  pure  poetry  has  a  recog- 
nised voice;  but  the  lower  elements  constitute  the 
popularity  in  a  cultivated  society  inclining  to  wanton- 
ness out  of  bravado  as  well  as  by  taste."  3     The  marked 

1  Harry  Richmond,  chapter  II. 

2  The  Tragic  Comedians,  chapter  IV. 

3  Ibid.,  chapter  IV. 


CRITIC   AND    REVIEWER  in 

influence  of  Carlyle  on  Meredith's  social  and  political 
opinion,  and  still  more  on  his  methods  of  thought,  gives 
a  special  interest  and  value  to  a  passage  in  Beanchamfts 
Career.  "  His  (Beauchamp's)  favourite  author,"  we  are 
told,  "  was  one  writing  of  Heroes,  in  a  style  resembling 
either  early  architecture  or  utter  dilapidation,  so  loose 
and  rough  it  seemed  ;  a  wind-in-the-orchard  style,  that 
tumbled  down  here  and  there  an  appreciable  fruit  with 
uncouth  bluster ;  sentences  without  commencements 
running  to  abrupt  endings  and  smoke,  like  waves 
against  a  seawall,  learned  dictionary  words  giving  a  hand 
to  street-slang,  and  accents  falling  on  them  haphazard, 
like  slant  rays  from  driving  clouds  ;  all  the  pages  in  a 
breeze,  the  whole  book  producing  a  kind  of  electrical 
agitation  in  the  mind  and  the  joints."  This,  it  is 
true,  is  Rosamund  Culling's  impression,  and  needs  as 
its  background  the  general  enthusiasm  for  Carlyle  im- 
plicit in  Meredith's  writings.  In  The  Essay  on  Comedy 
the  justice  of  some  of  Carlyle's  conclusions  touching 
history  and  society  are  indeed  questioned,  but  an 
immortal  tribute  is  paid  to  his  humour.  "  Finite  and 
infinite,"  it  is  said,  "  flash  from  one  to  the  other  with 
him,  lending  him  a  two-edged  thought  that  peeps  out 
of  his  peacefulest  lines  by  fits,  like  the  lantern  of  the 
fire-watcher  at  the  windows,  going  the  rounds  at  night." 
In  regard  to  their  style  it  is  sometimes  contended  that 
Meredith  and  Carlyle  drew  from  common  stock  in  Jean 
Paul  Richter.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  too  much 
stress  has  been  laid  on  German  influences  in  Meredith's 
writings ;  his  boyhood  certainly  was  spent  in  Germany, 
but  before  he  was  sixteen  he  had  returned  to  England. 
At  any  rate,  it  is  clear,  in  regard  to  ideas,  that  the 
nucleus  of  the  conception  of  Earth,  the  stress  laid  upon 
"the  stern-exact,"  the  belief  in  the  saving  power  of  work, 
are  shared  by  Meredith  with  Carlyle. 


ii2  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

And  last,  but  not  least,  among  these  quotations  one 
must  be  included  from  Sandra  Belloni,  in  which  we  have 
Meredith's  apologia  for  a  feature  commonly  condemned 
in  his  work.  Cornelia  has  objected  to  Tracy  Running- 
brook  as  a  novelist  on  the  ground  that  "  he  coins 
words."  Mr.  Barrett  replies.  "  A  writer,"  he  says,  "  who 
is  not  servile  and  has  insight,  must  coin  from  his  own 
mint.  In  poetry  we  are  rich  enough  ;  but  in  prose  also 
we  owe  everything  to  the  licence  our  poets  have  taken 
in  the  teeth  of  critics.  Our  simplest  prose  style  is 
nearer  to  poetry  with  us,  for  this  reason,  that  the  poets 
have  made  it.  Read  French  poetry.  With  the  first 
couplet  the  sails  are  full,  and  you  have  left  the  shores 
of  prose  far  behind.  Mr.  Runningbrook  coins  words  and 
risks  expressions  because  an  imaginative  Englishman, 
pen  in  hand,  is  the  cadet  and  vagabond  of  the  family — 
an  exploring  adventurer — whereas  to  a  Frenchman  it  all 
comes  inherited  like  a  well-filled  purse.  The  audacity 
of  the  French  mind,  and  the  French  habit  of  quick 
social  intercourse,  have  made  them  nationally  far  richer 
in  language.  Let  me  add,  individually  as  much  poorer. 
Read  their  stereotyped  descriptions.  They  all  say  the 
same  things.  They  have  one  big  Gallic  trumpet. 
Wonderfully  eloquent :  we  feel  that :  but  the  person 
does  not  speak.  And  now,  you  will  be  surprised  to 
learn  that,  notwithstanding  what  I  have  said,  I  should 
still  side  with  Mr.  Runningbrook's  fair  critic  rather  than 
with  him.  The  reason  is,  that  the  necessity  to  write  as 
he  does  is  so  great  that  a  strong  barrier — a  chevaux-de- 
frise  of  pen-points — >must  be  raised  against  every  newly- 
minted  word  and  hazardous  coiner,  or  we  shall  be 
inundated.  So  it  has  been  with  our  greatest,  so  it  must 
be  with  the  rest  of  them,  or  we  shall  have  a  Trans- 
atlantic literature.  By  no  means  desirable,  I  think. 
Yet,  see :  when  a  piece  of  Transatlantic  slang  happens 


CRITIC  AND   REVIEWER  113 

to  be  tellingly  true — something  coined  from  an  absolute 
experience ;  from  a  fight  with  elements — we  cannot 
resist  it :  it  invades  us.  In  the  same  way  poetic  rash- 
ness of  the  right  quality  enriches  the  language.  I  would 
make  it  prove  its  quality."  1 

1  Sandra  Belloni,  chapter  vni. 


CHAPTER   X 
THE  ADVENTURES  OF  HARRY  RICHMOND 

THE  reader  who  falls  under  the  spell  of  one  after 
another  of  Meredith's  novels  finds  himself  obliged 
to  be  on  his  guard  against  claiming  more  than  one  of 
them  as  the  greatest.  The  range  of  characterisation  is 
so  immense,  the  inequalities  within  the  same  book  are  so 
marked,  that  a  summary  estimate  of  each,  and  a  com- 
parison of  each  with  all  the  rest,  are  singularly  difficult 
to  make.  If  Harry  Richmond  might  be  divided  into 
two  halves,  of  the  first  it  would  be  easy  to  say:  "  Here  is 
the  greatest  of  Meredith's  novels."  This  portion,  which 
comprises  Harry's  boyhood  with  his  father  and  grand- 
father, his  stay  at  the  farm,  his  journey  with  Kiomi, 
and  his  voyage  with  Captain  Bulstead  and  travels  in 
Germany,  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  feats  in  our 
literature.  The  first  page  plunges  us  into  the  very 
heart  of  the  story.  That  midnight  tussle  between  old 
Squire  Beltham  and  Roy  Richmond  for  possession  of 
the  child  is  as  stirring  as  anything  in  our  fiction.  And 
it  provides  the  most  skilful  of  backgrounds  for  the 
fantasy  of  Harry's  after  life.  A  lesser  novelist  might 
have  moved  the  child  and  his  father  through  a  no-man's 
land  that  was  delightful  enough  ;  but  the  wonder  of 
Meredith's  exploit  is  that  their  life  appears  perfectly 
credible,  woven  against  this  most  typically  British  of 
backgrounds.  The  alternation  between  fantasy  and 
sanest  prose  is  maintained  throughout.  When  Shylock's 

114 


HARRY    RICHMOND  115 

descendant  walks  off  with  Roy  Richmond,  Harry  is 
conveyed  to  a  homestead  smelling  of  butter  and  cheese; 
while  Roy  is  diverting  a  German  principality  with  his 
freaks,  Harry  is  at  the  most  realistic  of  schools;  Kiomi's 
people  are  camped  at  the  very  gate  of  his  typically 
English  home,  but  Kiomi  is  "  fresh  of  the  East,  as  the 
morning  when  her  ancient  people  struck  tents  in  the 
track  of  their  shadows."  And  not  the  least  result  of 
this  delicate  counterpoise  is  the  reader's  sensation  that 
the  "cloud-capp'd  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces,"  with 
which  the  novelist's  fancy  surrounds  him,  have  their 
likeness  in  his  own  experience ;  life,  fitful  and  tragic, 
is  before  him,  though  never  exhausted  or  defined. 

Yet,  no  sooner  is  this  tribute  paid  to  the  first  half  of 
the  book  than  we  find  ourselves  hastening  to  remark 
upon  the  subtle  and  delicate  interests  of  the  last.  There 
Harry,  true  son  of  his  father,  is  the  fairy  prince  within 
sight  of  his  goal ;  but  no  more  than  within  sight  of  it, 
because  he  is  his  father's  son.  There  are  persons  in  life 
who  through  their  impressional  susceptibility,  and  by  a 
gift  of  passionate  appreciation,  may  take  rank  for  a  time 
with  those  who  are  greatly  their  superiors  ;  and  it  is  not 
the  smallest  of  Harry  Richmond's  distinctions  that  the 
Princess  Ottilia  lives  for  us  through  him,  and  that,  in 
spite  of  his  own  variableness,  he  makes  clear  to  us  what 
would  otherwise  be  inchoate  in  her.  For  if  Ottilia  is 
not  the  greatest  of  Meredith's  heroines,  it  is  because  his 
characterisation  of  her  is  too  elusive,  because  the  atmo- 
sphere she  breathes  in  is  too  rarefied  for  the  reader. 
Ottilia  never  formulates  or  expresses  any  decision 
against  marriage  with  Harry;  the  barrier  revealed  to 
us  between  them,  though  not  less  enduring  than  rank, 
is  much  less  tangible.  Not  to  be  removed  or  under- 
mined, it  might  have  been  surmounted  ;  but  a  giant 
such  as  Alvan  would  have  been  needed  for  the  task  :  it 


u6  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

was  ludicrously  impossible  for  a  youth  whose  delicacy 
and  insight  had  not  the  ordinary  Englishman's  endur- 
ance to  back  them  up. 

"  Poetry,"  Meredith  has  said,  "  is  the  everlastingly  and 
embracingly  human  ;  without  it  your  fictions  are  flat 
foolishness"  ;  and  again,  "When  we  let  romance  go  we 
change  a  sky  for  a  ceiling."  These  sentences  might 
serve  as  mottoes  for  Harry  Richmond,  a  book  by  the 
side  of  which  most  of  our  fictions  are  flat  foolishness 
indeed.  A  comparison  between  Richard  Feverel  and 
The  Egoist,  much  to  the  advantage  of  the  former,  was 
suggested  in  an  earlier  chapter;  and  surely,  if  any  further 
proof  were  needed  of  the  contention  that  Meredith's 
genius  lies  in  poetic  greatness  of  design  rather  than  in 
intellectual  analysis,  Harry  Richmond  would  supply  it. 
As  it  originally  appeared  in  The  Cornhill  (1870-71), 
the  book  was  sixty  chapters  in  length ;  its  length  has 
since  been  reduced  slightly,  but  it  is  still  the  longest  of 
the  novels.  In  the  space  at  our  disposal  an  analysis  of 
the  story,  or  even  of  the  characters,  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion, the  range  of  incident  and  characterisation  being 
immense.  There  is,  however,  one  personage  in  the  book, 
beside  whom  all  the  others  sink  into  comparative 
obscurity.  Roy  Richmond  is  one  of  the  greatest,  per- 
haps the  very  greatest,  of  Meredith's  creations.  He  is 
the  tragic  comedian,  unrivalled  in  fiction.  Excepting 
the  essentials,  he  possesses  all  the  equipment  of  a  hero. 
His  affections  are  strong,  his  feeling  in  matters  of  taste 
is  delicate ;  he  is  fearless  and  marvellously  energetic 
and  resourceful.  But  morally  he  is  an  outlaw,  and  uses 
the  weapons  of  outlawry.  To  Squire  Beltham,  whose 
daughter  he  married,  he  stands  for  all  that  is  outrageous 
and  low.  To  his  son,  in  childhood,  and  to  the  women 
who  love  him,  he  is  without  equal  on  earth.  Harry  is 
little  more  than  a  baby  when  his  father  carries  him  off 


HARRY    RICHMOND  117 

from  his  grandfather's  country  home  to  live  in  "  a  street 
where  all  the  house-doors  were  painted  black  and  shut 
with  a  bang  " — a  street  haunted  by  milkmen  "  and  no 
cows  anywhere ;  numbers  of  people,  and  no  acquaint- 
ances among  them."  But  "  my  father,"  he  tells  us, 
"  could  soon  make  me  forget  that  I  was  transplanted  ; 
he  could  act  dog,  tame  rabbit,  fox,  pony,  and  a  whole 
nursery  collection  alive.  .  .  .  When  he  was  at  home  I 
rode  him  all  round  the  room  and  upstairs  to  bed. 
I  lashed  him  with  a  whip  till  he  frightened  me,  so  real 
was  his  barking.  If  I  said  '  Menagerie,'  he  became  a 
caravan  of  wild  beasts ;  I  undid  a  button  of  his  waist- 
coat, and  it  was  a  lion  that  made  a  spring,  roaring  at 
me ;  I  pulled  his  coat-tails,  and  off  I  went  tugging  at 
an  old  bear  that  swung  a  hind  leg  as  he  turned,  in  the 
queerest  way,  and  then  sat  up,  and  beating  his  breast 
sent  out  a  mew-moan.  Our  room  was  richer  to  me 
than  all  the  Grange  while  these  performances  were 
going  forward.  His  monkey  was  almost  as  wonderful 
as  his  bear,  only  he  was  too  big  for  it,  and  was  obliged 
to  aim  at  reality  in  his  representation  of  this  animal  by 
means  of  a  number  of  breakages  ;  a  defect  that  brought 
our  landlady  on  the  scene."  The  Sundays  of  the  pair 
are  devoted  to  quieter  but  not  less  enthralling  enter- 
tainments. '"Great  Will '  my  father  called  Shakespeare, 
and  '  Slender  Billy,'  Pitt.  The  scene  where  Great  Will 
killed  the  deer,  dragging  Falstaff  all  over  the  park 
after  it  by  the  light  of  Bardolph's  nose,  upon  which 
they  put  an  extinguisher  if  they  heard  any  of  the 
keepers,  and  so  left  everybody  groping  about  and 
catching  the  wrong  person,  was  the  most  wonderful 
mixture  of  fun  and  tears.  Great  Will  was  extremely 
youthful,  but  everyone  in  the  park  called  him  '  Father 
William ' ;  and  when  he  wanted  to  know  which  way 
the  deer  had  gone,  King   Lear   (or  else    my   memory 


n8  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

deceives  me)  punned,  and  Lady  Macbeth  waved  a 
handkerchief  for  it  to  be  steeped  in  the  blood  of  the 
deer  ;  Shylock  ordered  one  pound  of  the  carcase ; 
Hamlet  (the  fact  was  impressed  upon  me)  offered 
him  a  three-legged  stool ;  and  a  number  of  kings  and 
knights  and  ladies  lit  their  torches  from  Bardolph ; 
and  away  they  flew,  distracting  the  keepers  and  leaving 
Will  and  his  troop  to  the  deer.  That  poor  thing  died 
from  a  different  weapon  at  each  recital,  though  always 
with  a  flow  of  blood  and  a  successful  dash  of  his 
antlers  into  Falstaff;  and  to  hear  Falstaff  bellow! 
But  it  was  mournful  to  hear  how  sorry  Great  Will 
was  over  the  animal  he  had  slain.  He  spoke  like 
music.  I  found  it  pathetic  in  spite  of  my  knowing 
that  the  whole  scene  was  lighted  up  by  Bardolph's 
nose.  When  I  was  just  bursting  out  crying — for  the 
deer's  tongue  was  lolling  out  and  quick  pantings  were 
at  his  side,  he  had  little  ones  at  home — Great  Will 
remembered  his  engagement  to  sell  Shylock  a  pound 
of  the  carcase ;  determined  that  no  Jew  should  eat 
of  it,  he  bethought  him  that  Falstaff  could  well  spare 
a  pound,  and  he  said  the  Jew  would  not  see  the 
difference  :  Falstaff  only  got  off  by  hard  running,  and 
roaring  out  that  he  knew  his  unclean  life  would  make 
him  taste  like  pork  and  thus  let  the  Jew  into  the  trick." 
Roy  Richmond's  irresponsibility  and  foolishness  are  well- 
nigh  incredible;  yet  he  has  us  by  the  heart-strings.  In 
that  great  scene  towards  the  close  of  the  book,  "Strange 
Revelations,"  in  which  Squire  Beltham  carries  out  his 
threat  "  to  strip  him  stark  till  he  flops  down  shivering 
into  his  slough  a  convicted,  common  swindler,  with  his 
dinners  and  balls  and  his  private  bands,"  and  brings 
home  to  him  the  whole  tale  of  his  sins,  we  see  him, 
not  with  the  eyes  of  the  old  man  who  has  truth  and 
justice  on    his   side,  but  with  those  of  the  high-bred 


HARRY    RICHMOND  119 

woman  who,  in  the  midst  of  this  outburst,  avows  that 
Richmond  has  had  her  lifelong  devotion  and  that  he 
retains  it  still. 

In  the  twenty-eighth  and  twenty-ninth  chapters  of 
the  book,  England  is  revealed  to  us  as  she  appears 
to  German  eyes,  a  country  of  pioneers,  invaluable 
to  the  progress  of  humanity  in  past  time,  but  to-day 
money-grabbing,  "  mindless  and  arrogant,  and  neither 
in  the  material  or  spiritual  kingdom  of  noble  or 
gracious  stature : "  condemned,  as  Ottilia,  quoting  and 
endorsing  her  professor,  tells  Harry,  "  to  be  overthrown 
and  left  behind,  there  to  gain  humility  from  the  only 
teacher  she  can  understand,  poverty."  The  professor 
himself,  Dr.  Julius  von  Karsteg,  develops  the  subject 
at  length.  What,  he  asks  Harry  abruptly,  is  his 
scheme  of  life?  and  makes  use  of  his  reply  to  tear 
his  ioeals  to  shreds.  The  wealthy  English,  he  says, 
are  an  insufferable,  unwarrantable  class,  without  their 
parallel  in  Europe.  Harry  speaks  vaguely  of  his 
dream  of  doing  some  good  ;  the  dream  is  dashed  aside 
as  common  to  every  prince  and  millionaire  that  ever 
lived.  Attempting  to  defend  his  country,  Harry 
mentions  our  conquest  and  occupation  of  India :  is 
not  that  something  ?  "  '  Something,'  "  the  professor 
snaps  out,  " '  for  non-commissioned  officers  to  boast 
of,  not  for  statesmen.  However,  say  that  you  are  fit 
to  govern  Asiatics,  go  on.'  '  I  would  endeavour  to 
equalise  ranks  at  home,  encourage  the  growth  of 
ideas.  .  .  . '  '  Supporting  a  non-celibate  clergy,  and 
an  intermingled  aristocracy?  Your  endeavours,  my 
good  young  man,  will  lessen  like  those  of  the  man 
who  employed  a  spade  to  uproot  a  rock.  It  wants 
blasting.  Your  married  clergy  and  merchandised 
aristocracy  are  evils :  they  are  the  ivy  about  your 
social    tree :    you    would    resemble    Laocoon    in    the 


120  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

throes,  if  one  could  imagine  you  anything  of  a  heroic 
figure/  " 

The  book  is  life  itself,  many-sided,  complex,  digres- 
sive ;  but  it  is  art  also.  The  whole  is  rounded  to  its 
conclusion  in  the  scene  in  which  Harry  returns  to  the 
Grange  with  Janet  Ilchester,  the  girl  long  ago  chosen 
by  his  grandfather  to  be  his  wife.  As  they  approach, 
the  sky  is  seen  to  hang  reddened  over  Riversley,  and, 
when  the  house  comes  in  view,  it  is  enveloped  in  flames; 
"  fire  at  the  wings,  fire  at  the  heart,"  no  vestige  of 
the  home  of  generations  of  Belthams  is  to  be  savdd. 
Roy  Richmond,  failing  and  broken,  but  true  to  his 
character  to  the  last,  has  been  making  preparation  to 
receive  Harry  and  his  bride — "  lamps,  lights  in  all  the 
rooms,  torches  in  the  hall,  illuminations  along  the 
windows,  stores  of  fireworks,  such  a  display  as  only  he 
could  have  dreamed  of."  Once  more  the  price  of  his 
foolishness  is  to  pay.  But  the  comedian  himself  is  not 
forthcoming.  In  his  solicitude  for  Dorothy  Beltham, 
his  lifelong  benefactress,  he  has  refused  to  leave  the 
house.     Roy  Richmond  has  laid  down  his  life. 


CHAPTER   XI 

BEAUCHAMP'S  CAREER  AND   MEREDITH'S 
POLITICAL   VIEWS 

IT  is  well  known  that  Beauchamp's  character  was 
modelled  upon  that  of  the  late  Admiral  Maxse. 
From  boyhood  till  his  death  in  1900,  Admiral  Maxse 
was  one  of  Meredith's  most  intimate  friends.  The 
volume  Modern  Love,  and  Poems  of  the  English  Road- 
side of  1862  is  "affectionately  dedicated  to  Captain 
Maxse,  R.N. " ;  Modern  Love,  a  reprint ;  to  which  is 
added  The  Sage  Enamoured  and  The  Honest  Lady  is 
inscribed  in  1892  "To  Admiral  Maxse,  in  constant 
friendship."  In  the  year  1868  Frederick  Maxse  stood 
as  Radical  candidate  for  Southampton  and  was  de- 
feated. Meredith  went  through  the  campaign  with  his 
friend,  and  directly  the  election  was  over  wrote  Beau- 
champ's  Career  in  his  home  ; x  Dr.  Shrapnel,  Carpendike, 
Oggler,  even  Tomlinson,  and  Algy  Borolick  are 
taken  from  life.  The  original  of  "Mount  Laurels" 
is  Holly  Hill  on  the  Hamble  River,  Southampton 
Water,  which  was  at  this  time  the  Maxses'  family 
home.  The  actuality  of  the  story  lends  an  added 
interest  to  this,  Meredith's  single  political  novel. 
To  a  man  of  his  stature,  political  activity  must  be 
at  the  summit,  or  almost  the  summit,  of  human 
endeavour,  and   the   range  of  his   characters  necessi- 

1  It  appeared  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  from  August,  lS74,  to  Decem- 
ber, 1875,  inclusive. 

121 


122  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

tates  political  allusions  in  most  of  his  books.  But 
details  of  Harry  Richmond's  candidature,  or  even  of 
Sigismund  Alvan  and  Diana  Warwick's  opinions,  do 
not  constitute  a  political  novel.  National  interests, 
in  these  cases,  are  attributes  of  the  characters,  they  are 
not  the  pivot  on  which  the  characters  turn.  Beauchamp's 
personal  and  private  relations,  on  the  other  hand,  are 
little  but  platforms  by  which  we  may  mount  to  the 
startling  conception  of  an  Englishman  passionately 
moved  by  abstractions.  This  tale,  Meredith  writes, 
is  of  one  "  born  with  so  extreme  and  passionate  a  love 
for  his  country,  that  he  thought  all  things  else  of  mean 
importance  in  comparison.  This  day,  this  hour,  this 
life,  and  even  politics,  the  centre  and  throbbing  heart  of 
it,  must  be  treated  of:  men,  and  the  ideas  of  men, 
which  are  actually  the  motives  of  men  in  a  greater 
degree  than  their  appetites :  these  are  my  theme." 
And  this  statement  as  to  the  theme  and  its  nature  is 
answer  to  the  dissatisfaction  we  may  feel  with  Beau- 
champ  in  his  relation  to  Cecilia  and  even  to  Jenny. 
With  Ren6e  in  Venice  he  is  whole-hearted  indeed  ;  but 
his  career  has  not  then  opened  ;  we  have  only,  as  it 
were,  the  material  on  which  his  idealism  is  to  work. 
And  even  here  we  may,  if  we  will,  have  a  foretaste  of 
what  is  to  be,  in  that  great  scene  on  the  Adriatic 
when  Beauchamp  has  had  the  boat  put  about,  and  re- 
fuses to  allow  Rente's  brother  to  turn  it  again  towards 
Venice.  For,  even  in  that  passionate  moment,  Beau- 
champ's  mind  is  accessible  to  fact.  The  lover's  dream 
of  a  world  subservient  to  his  wishes  has  been  his  for  an 
hour  ;  but  Rosamund  Culling's  reminder  of  his  financial 
dependence  on  his  uncle  "  strikes  his  hot  brain  with  a 
bar  as  of  iron."  And  later,  it  is  with  Renee,  when  she 
has  fled  to  him  from  her  husband,  that  Beauchamp 
sets   his    conviction    of  "  the    world's    dues,    fees,   and 


BEAUCHAMP'S   CAREER  123 

claims  "  to  confront  his  agonised  longings  and  subdue 
them.     "  Beauchampism,"    Meredith    writes,   "  may   be 
said  to  stand  for  nearly  everything  which  is  the  obverse 
of  Byronism,  and  rarely  woos  your  sympathy,  shuns 
the  statuesque  pathetic,  or  any  kind  of  posturing.  .  .  . 
His  faith  is  in  working  and  fighting."    No  one  is  better 
qualified  than  Meredith  to  expose  a  youth,  attempting 
the  reformation   of  his  elders,  in    ludicrous  light.     In 
Beauchamp's  case  he  betrays  no  such  desire,  and  the 
reason    for   this  he  gives   at  the  outset  of  the  story. 
Proud  of  his  fire  and  good  looks,  his  uncle  Everard 
would  have  spoiled  Nevil  Beauchamp  in  his  childhood, 
had    not   the  boy's  "veneration  of  heroes  living  and 
dead  kept  down  his  conceit."  Nevil  is  a  hero-worshipper, 
"  possessed  by  reverence  for  men   of  deeds,"  and  in- 
capable therefore  of  esteeming  himself — who  has  done 
nothing — highly.     Destined  by  his  uncle  for  the  navy, 
to  which  he  is  to  be  despatched  at  fourteen,  as  that 
age  approaches  he  expresses  a  desire  to  stay  longer  at 
school.     "  The   fellow   would    like    to    be    a   parson ! " 
Everard    Romfrey    exclaims   in    disgust.     "  I'd    rather 
enlist  for  a  soldier,"  says  Nevil,  in  repudiation  of  the 
charge  and  in  despair  of  explaining  his  true  motive. 
But  to  his  uncle's  housekeeper,  his  dear  friend  Rosa- 
mund   Culling,   he    confides    that,   in    one    particular, 
parsons  are  enviable — they  have  time  to  read  history 
and  decide  which  party  was  right  in  our  civil  war.     He 
hates   bloodshed,   and,   to    his   uncle    Everard's    mind, 
comes  dangerously  near  "the  cotton-spinner's  babble" 
in  speaking  of  it.     He  even  seems  to  have  got  hold  of 
some  Manchester  sarcasms  touching  Glory.     ;'  He  said  : 
'  I  don't  care  to  win  glory  ;  I  know  all  about  that ;  I've 
seen  an  old  hat  in  the  Louvre.'     And  he  would  have 
Rosamund  to  suppose  that  he  had  looked  on  the  cam- 
paigning head-cover  of  Napoleon  simply  as  a  shocking, 


i24  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

bad,  bald,  brown-rubbed  old  tricorne,  rather  than  as  the 
nod  of  extinction  to  thousands,  the  great  orb  of  dark- 
ness, the  still-trembling  gloomy  quiver — the  brain  of 
the  lightnings  of  battles."  But,  Meredith  explains, 
"  this  boy  nursed  no  secret  presumptuous  belief  that 
he  was  fitted  for  the  walks  of  the  higher  intellect ; 
he  was  not  having  his  impudent  boy's  fling  at 
superiority  over  the  superior."  His  shrinking  from  the 
career  before  him  amounted  almost  to  terror  ;  all  the 
same,  he  returned  from  his  first  voyage — as  his  uncle 
said  he  would — a  gallant  sailor  lad.  And  a  year  or 
two  later  during  the  Crimean  War,  Everard  Romfrey 
finds  himself  obliged,  by  reports  of  Nevil's  turn  for  over- 
doing his  duty,  to  write  to  him  :  "  Braggadocioing  in 
deeds  is  only  next  bad  to  mouthing  it.  Remember  that 
we  want  soldiers  and  sailors,  not  suicides?  As  Nevil's 
great  -  aunt  Beauchamp  sagely  points  out,  much 
trouble  would  have  been  spared  if  the  lad  had  stayed 
at  school  and  gone  on  to  college.  Probably  in  an 
atmosphere  of  words  he  would  have  been  bled  of  his 
plethora  of  ideas.  As  it  was,  they  accumulated  to  un- 
wieldy proportions.  But  it  is  one  of  Meredith's  favourite 
distinctions  between  the  great  and  the  small-natured, 
that  the  former  reverence  and  the  latter  despise  what  is 
unfathomable  to  them;  and  it  was  Nevil's  safeguard  that 
he  was  always  finding,  in  books  and  in  his  fellows,  more 
than  he  found  in  himself.  His  early  choice  of  Carlyle 
as  his  favourite  author  was  largely  based  on  the  obscurity 
of  his  diction.  He  "  liked  a  bone  in  his  mouth  to  gnaw 
at,"  he  said.  Beauchamp  is  without  rival  among  Mere- 
dith's masculine  characters.  His  author  has  avoided 
the  danger  of  running  him  into  his  favourite  heroic 
mould.  Gallant  and  upright  as  Wentworth  and  Whit- 
ford  and  Weyburn,  Beauchamp  has  far  more  complexity. 
Meredith  has  written  elsewhere  :  "  Men  who  have  the 


BEAUCHAMP'S    CAREER  125 

woman  in  them  without  being  womanised,  they  are  the 
pick  of  men," l  and  we  suspect  the  generalisation  has 
basis  at  least  in  his  knowledge  of  Beauchamp.  A 
lover  of  all  that  is  graceful  and  gracious — ■"  Beauty," 
we  are  told,  "  plucked  the  heart  from  his  breast" — he 
took  up  arms  for  his  fellows,  "  drank  of  the  questioning 
cup,  that  which  denieth  peace  to  us,  and  which  projects 
us  on  the  missionary  search  of  the  How,  the  Wherefore, 
and  the  Why  not,  ever  afterward.  He  questioned  his 
justification,  and  yours,  for  gratifying  tastes  in  an  ill- 
regulated  world  of  wrong-doing,  suffering,  sin,  and 
bounties  unrighteously  dispensed — not  sufficiently  dis- 
persed. He  said  by-and-by  to  pleasure,  battle  to-day." 
In  Beauchamp's  character,  a  type  of  youth  happily  not 
unfamiliar — the  best  type  of  our  day — is  portrayed  with 
absolute  success ;  one  in  which  disregard  of  means  to 
ends,  and  consequent  want  of  effectiveness,  are  due,  not 
to  conceit  or  impatience,  but  to  an  over-enthusiastic 
belief  in  the  immediate  capacity  for  amendment  of 
men  and  of  things. 

Rosamund  Culling  is  one  of  the  most  delightful 
persons  in  the  book  and  in  the  whole  of  Meredith's 
work.  Widow  of  a  distinguished  military  officer,  she 
is  a  gentlewoman  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  and  a 
woman  of  the  world  into  the  bargain.  Consequently, 
the  fact  that  many  of  the  chief  incidents  of  the  plot 
gather  round  the  scandal  occasioned  by  her  social 
position  as  Everard  Romfrey's  housekeeper,  and  that 
even  Beauchamp,  who  has  loved  her  from  childhood, 
looks  on  his  uncle's  marriage  with  her  as  a  mesalliance, 
appears  to  our  eyes  very  strange.  Mr.  Trevelyan  has 
remarked  that  when  Meredith  is  out  of  touch  with  the 
thought  of  this  generation  it  is  usually  because  he  is 
ahead  of  it.      In  matters  of  fundamental   importance 

1   The  Tragic  Comedians,  chapter  VII. 


126  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

this  is  undoubtedly  true.  In  matters  of  detail  certain 
changes  have  taken  place.  Minor  social  distinctions  are, 
happily,  not  so  marked  as  they  were.  And  ideas  as  to 
age  have  altered  remarkably.  Lady  Charlotte  Chilling- 
worth's  contemplation  of  marriage  is  hastened  by  the 
fact  that,  for  her,  the  "  thirty  fatal  bells  have  struck  "  ; 
when  Diana  Warwick,  disciplined  and  experienced,  is 
allowed  to  fall  back  at  last  on  the  mature  business-man 
of  the  book,  a  man  whom  we  of  the  present  day  would 
guess  to  be  fifty  at  least,  the  reader  is  astounded  to 
learn  that  he  is  thirty-three  years  of  age ;  and  Renee 
de  Croisnel,  on  the  eve  of  her  marriage  with  the  Marquis 
de  Rouaillout,  is  but  just  seventeen. 

Renee  is  French,  and  Nevil,  who  has  saved  her 
brother's  life  in  the  war,  meets  her  in  Venice.  Nevil  is 
wounded,  and  his  days  are  spent  with  Ren6e  and  Roland 
gliding  in  and  out  of  the  canals  in  an  open  gondola, 
which  Renee  has  decorated  in  imitation  of  Carpaccio's 
glories.  "  A  brunette  of  the  fine  lineaments  of  the 
good  blood  of  France,  she  chattered  snatches  of  Vene- 
tian caught  from  the  gondoliers,  she  was  like  a  delicate 
cup  of  crystal  brimming  with  the  beauty  of  the  place, 
and  making  one  of  them  drink  in  all  his  impressions 
through  her."  In  her  is  centred  Meredith's  strong  feel- 
ing for  Venice,  which,  apparent  in  much  of  his  work, 
finds  fullest  expression  in  Beauclianifs  Career.  Renee 
adroitly  sums  up  one  aspect  of  the  place,  when  Beau- 
champ  reminds  her  that  in  study  of  Ruskin  she  is 
missing  the  scenes.  " '  The  scenes,' "  she  exclaims, 
"  '  are  green  shutters,  wet  steps,  barcaroli,  brown  women, 
striped  posts,  a  scarlet  night-cap,  a  sick  fig-tree,  an  old 
shawl,  faded  spots  of  colour,  peeling  walls.  They 
might  be  figured  by  a  trodden  melon/ "  But  the  poig- 
nant beauty  of  Venice  so  encompasses  Ren6e  and 
Nevil  that  the  intensity  of  their  relation  seems  never 


BEAUCHAMP'S    CAREER  127 

quite  recaptured  in  the  stormier  scenes  at  Tourdestelle. 
Venice  has  been  the  French  girl's  dream,  and  at  first 
the  reality  disenchants  her.     She  is  petulant  with  the 
present,  and   hungry  for  the   past,  "  for   the   flashing 
colours  and  pageantries,  and  the  threads  of  desperate 
adventure  crossing  the  rii  to  this  and  that  palace  door 
and  balcony,  like  faint  blood    streaks ;    the   times   of 
Venice   in    full    flower."     Fascinated    as  he  is  by  her 
whimsical  grace,  it  is  impossible  to  Nevil  to  perceive  her 
wrongheadedness  without  attempting  to  right  it.     He 
reads    Ruskin,  and    she   reasons   against   him.      That 
period   of    faith   and    stone-cutting   must,  she  insists, 
have  been  "  Huguenot — harsh,  nasal,  sombre,  insolent, 
self-sufficient."     If  the  Venice  of  her  love  was  indeed 
the  Venice  of   the  decadence,  it  should  not  bear  the 
whole  of  the  blame.     " '  We  are  known  by  our  fruits, 
are  we  not  ?  and  the  Venice  I  admire  was  surely  the 
fruit  of  these  stone-cutters  chanting  hymns  of  faith ;  it 
could  not  but  be  :  and  if  it  deserved,  as  he  says,  to  die 
disgraced,  I  think  we  should  go  back  to  them,  and  ask 
them  whether  their  minds  were  as  pure  and  holy  as  he 
supposes.'      Her  French  wits  would   not  be  subdued. 
Nevil  pointed  to  the  palaces.     '  Pride,'  said  she.     He 
argued  that  the  original  Venetians  were  not  responsible 
for  their  offspring.     '  You  say  it  ?  '  she  cried,  '  You,  of 
an  old  race  ?     Oh,  no  ;    you  do  not  feel  it ! '  and  the 
trembling  fervour  of  her  voice  convinced  him  that  he 
did  not,  could  not.     Renee  said,  '  I  know  my  ancestors 
are  bound  up  in  me  by  my  sentiments  to  them  ;  and  so 
do  you,  M.  Nevil.   We  shame  them  if  we  fail  in  courage 
and  honour.      Is  it  not  so?      If    we   break    a   single 
pledged  word  we  cast  shame  on    them.      Why,  that 
makes  us  what  we  are,  that  is  our  distinction  :  we  dare 
not  be  weak  if  we  would.     And  therefore  when  Venice 
is  reproached  with  avarice  and  luxury,  I  choose  to  say 


128  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

— what  do  we  hear  of  the  children  of  misers?  and  I 
say  that  I  am  certain  that  those  old  cold  Huguenot 
stone-cutters  were  proud  and  grasping.  I  am  sure  they 
were,  and  they  shall  share  the  blame.' "  She  and  Nevil 
stand  together  to  gaze  on  setting  Venice  in  the  stern  of 
the  boat  in  which,  under  Rosamund  Culling's  protec- 
tion, they  spend  their  last  night  before  the  arrival  of 
Renee's  elderly  marquis.  "  The  faint  red  Doge's  palace 
was  like  the  fading  of  another  sunset  north-westward 
of  the  glory  along  the  hills.  Venice  dropped  lower  and 
lower,  breasting  the  waters,  until  it  was  a  thin  line  in 
air.  The  line  was  broken,  and  ran  in  dots,  with  here 
and  there  a  pillar  standing  on  opal  sky.  At  last  the 
topmost  campanile  sank."  Nevil  sleeps  on  deck,  and 
wakes  with  the  light  to  behold  the  peaks  at  the  head  of 
the  gulf — a  vivid  host  above  the  snow-fields — kindled 
one  by  one  to  crimson  flame.  "  Nevil's  personal  rapture 
craved  for  Renee  with  the  second  long  breath  he  drew ; 
and  now  the  curtain  of  her  tent-cabin  parted,  and 
greeting  him  with  a  half-smile,  she  looked  out.  The 
Adriatic  was  dark,  the  Alps  had  heaven  to  themselves. 
Crescents  and  hollows,  rosy  mounds,  white  shelves, 
shining  ledges,  domes  and  peaks,  all  the  towering 
heights  were  in  illumination  from  Friuli  into  farthest 
Tyrol ;  beyond  earth  to  the  stricken  senses  of  the 
gazers.  Colour  was  steadfast  on  the  massive  front 
ranks  :  it  wavered  in  the  remoteness,  and  was  quick  and 
dim  as  though  it  fell  on  beating  wings ;  but  there  too 
divine  colour  seized  and  shaped  forth  solid  forms,  and 
thence  away  to  others  in  uttermost  distances  where  the 
incredible  flickering  gleam  of  new  heights  arose,  that 
soared,  or  stretched  their  white  uncertain  curves  in  sky 
like  wings  traversing  infinity.  It  seemed  unlike  morn- 
ing to  the  lovers,  but  as  if  night  had  broken  with  a 
revelation  of  the  kingdom  in  the  heart  of  night.    While 


BEAUCHAMP'S    CAREER  129 

the  broad,  smooth  waters  rolled  un lighted  beneath  that 
transfigured  upper  sphere,  it  was  possible  to  think  the 
scene  might  vanish  like  a  view  caught  out  of  darkness 
by  lightning.  Alp  over  burning  Alp,  and  around  them 
a  hueless  dawn  !  " 

Our  next  chapter  contains  a  summary  of  Meredith's 
treatment  of  Egoism  in  the  Prelude  to  The  Egoist.  Of 
a  survivor  of  that  "  grand  old  Egoism  "  which  "  afore- 
time built  the  House"  no  better  example  than  the 
Hon.  Everard  Romfrey  is  to  be  found.  He  comes  of 
a  long  race  of  fighting  earls,  "  a  savour  of  North  Sea 
foam  and  ballad  pirates"  about  their  earliest  history, 
chivalrous  knights  later,  and  leaders  in  the  field  ;  "  good 
landlords,  good  masters,  blithely  followed  to  the  wars. 
Sing  an  old  battle  of  Normandy,  Picardy,  Gascony, 
and  you  celebrate  deeds  of  theirs."  At  the  time  the 
story  opens  the  Earls  of  Romfrey  from  their  topmost 
towers  "  spied  few  spots  in  the  wide  circle  of  the 
heavens  "  that  were  not  their  own.  The  Hon,  Everard 
(Stephen  Denely  Craven)  Romfrey,  third  son  of  the 
late  Earl,  with  a  good  prospect  of  inheriting  the  title, 
in  mind  is  a  mediaeval  baron.  He  had  been  at  one 
time  "a  hot  Parliamentarian,  calling  himself  a  Whig, 
called  by  the  Whigs  a  Radical,  called  by  the  Radicals 
a  Tory,  and  very  happy  in  fighting  them  all  round." 
He  stood  for  King,  Lords,  and  Commons ;  "  Commons 
he  added  out  of  courtesy."  His  real  interest  is  the 
preservation  of  his  game.  Beside  this,  all  other  matters 
sink  to  insignificance,  and  it  is  on  the  question  of  his 
fellows'  attitude  to  the  Game  Laws  that  his  partialities 
or  antipathies  turn.  Childless  and  a  widower,  he 
adopted  his  sister's  son,  Nevil  Beauchamp,  in  his  baby- 
hood. Throughout,  his  affection  for  Nevil  is  deep,  but 
he  and  Shrapnel  ally  themselves  with  poachers,  and  are 
therefore,  incontestably,  mad.    Everard  Romfrey  is,  in 

K 


i3o  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

the  old  sense  of  the  word,  a  gentleman  ;  his  instincts 
are  everything  that  Willoughby  Patterne's  are  not. 
Indeed,  Romfrey's  nature  differs  so  widely  from  Wil- 
loughby's  that  we  cannot  but  question  whether  Meredith 
does  not  intend  the  Patternes'  comparatively  recent 
acquisition  of  wealth  and  estates  to  account  for  Wil- 
loughby's  mean-mindedness.  Everard  Romfrey  is  as 
chivalrous  to  his  dependants  as  to  his  equals  ;  slightly 
more  so  perhaps,  from  the  tradition  that  service  consti- 
tutes a  bond.  Rosamund  Culling  dares,  without  fear  of 
offence  to  her  ears,  probe  him  as  to  the  grounds  of  the 
fight  on  her  behalf  between  the  boy  Nevil  and  his  cousin 
Cecil  Baskelet,  "  sure  that  he  would  at  all  costs  protect 
a  woman's  delicacy,  and  a  dependant's,  man  or  woman." 
When  Nevil  is  Radical  candidate  for  Bevisham,  Romfrey 
almost  succeeds  in  decoying  him  into  driving  into  the 
town  side  by  side  with  the  Conservative  candidate  who 
is  to  be  sprung  upon  him.  Yet  the  idea  of  disinheriting 
the  lad  for  his  opinions  hardly  occurs  to  his  uncle.  When 
Rosamund  Culling  is  his  wife  and  Countess  of  Romfrey, 
she  compels  him,  for  her  sake  and  in  thought  of  their 
child,  to  go  and  apologise  to  the  man  he  has  horse- 
whipped ;  the  task  is  intensely  repugnant  to  him  ;  but, 
when  at  last  he  is  persuaded  to  it,  he  goes  without  a 
thought  of  reminding  her  of  her  responsibility  for  his 
original  action.  He  arrives  at  Dr.  Shrapnel's  house 
deeply  prejudiced  against  him  and  all  his  belongings  ; 
nevertheless,  he  treats  the  doctor's  niece,  Jenny  Denham, 
as  though  she  were  Cecilia  Halkett,  and  recognises  in 
her  a  distinction  that  even  Cecilia  does  not  possess. 
The  struggle  between  Romfrey  and  Beauchamp  runs 
through  the  book  ;  throughout  Romfrey  perceives  the 
quality  of  his  antagonist,  and  appreciates  it  most  when 
he  has  to  acknowledge  himself  beaten.  At  the  close 
of  the  story  Nevil,  who  has  been  for  weeks  at  death's 


BEAUCHAMP'S    CAREER  131 

door,  is  struggling  to  life.  News  of  his  engagement  to 
Jenny  Denham  reaches  the  Earl  and  his  wife.  Rosa- 
mund, with  her  passionate  attachment  to  Beauchamp, 
is  shocked  to  find  that  the  girl  is  hardly  in  love.  "  She 
asked  the  earl's  opinion  of  the  startling  intelligence, 
and  of  the  character  of  that  Miss  Denham,  who  could 
pen  such  a  letter,  after  engaging  to  give  her  hand  to 
Nevil.  Lord  Romfrey  laughed  in  his  dumb  way.  '  If 
Nevil  must  have  a  wife — and  the  marquise  tells  you  so, 
and  she  ought  to  know — he  may  as  well  marry  a  girl 
who  won't  go  all  the  way  downhill  with  him  at  his  pace. 
He'll  be  cogged.'  '  You  do  not  object  to  such  an 
alliance  ?  '  '  I'm  past  objection.  There's  no  law  against 
a  man's  marrying  his  nurse.'  '  But  she  is  not  even  in 
love  with  him  ! '  'I  dare  say  not.  He  wants  a  wife  : 
she  accepts  a  husband.  The  two  women,  who  were  in 
love  with  him,  he  wouldn't  have.'  Lady  Romfrey 
sighed  deeply  :  '  He  has  lost  Cecilia  !  She  might  still 
have  been  his :  but  he  has  taken  to  that  girl.  And 
Madame  de  Rouaillout  praises  the  girl  because — oh ! 
I  see  it — she  has  less  to  be  jealous  of  in  Miss  Denham, 
of  whose  birth  and  blood  we  know  nothing.  Let  that 
pass.  If  only  she  loved  him  !  I  cannot  endure  the 
thought  of  his  marrying  a  girl  who  is  not  in  love  with 
him.'  '  Just  as  you  like,  my  dear.'  '  Oh,  what  an  end 
of  so  brilliant  a  beginning  ! '  'It  strikes  me,  my  dear,' 
said  the  earl,  '  it's  the  proper  common-sense  beginning 
that  may  have  a  fairish  end.'  '  No,  but  what  I  feel 
is  that  he — our  Nevil — has  accomplished  hardly  any- 
thing, if  anything.'  '  He  hasn't  marched  on  London 
with  a  couple  of  hundred  thousand  men  :  no,  he  hasn't 
done  that,'  the  earl  said,  glancing  back  in  mind  through 
Beauchamp's  career.  '  And  he  escapes  what  Stukely 
calls  his  nation's  scourge,  in  the  shape  of  a  statue 
turned  out  by  an  English  chisel.     No  :  we  haven't  had 


132  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

much  public  excitement  out  of  him.  But  one  thing 
he  did  do  :  lie  got  me  down  on  my  knees  /'  Lord  Rom- 
frey  pronounced  these  words  with  a  sober  emphasis 
that  struck  the  humour  of  it  sharply  into  Rosamund's 
heart,  through  some  contrast  it  presented  between 
Nevil's  aim  at  the  world  and  hit  of  a  man:  the  im- 
mense deal  thought  of  it  by  the  Earl,  and  the  very  little 
that  Nevil  would  think  of  it  —  the  great  domestic 
achievement  to  be  boasted  of  by  an  enthusiastic  devotee 
of  politics !  She  embraced  her  husband  with  peals  of 
loving  laughter :  the  last  laughter  heard  at  Romfrey 
Castle  for  many  a  day." 

Dr.  Shrapnel,  Beauchamp's  political  mentor  and  the 
mouthpiece  of  his  ideals,  talks  like  Carlyle ;  and  in  his 
semi-chaotic  forms  of  expression  Meredith  finds  a  con- 
genial channel  of  thought.  Extracts  from  Shrapnel's 
letters  to  Beauchamp  figure  also  in  the  book,  often 
lengthy  and  discursive,  but  almost  always  notable. 
"Professors,  prophets,  masters,"  he  writes,  "each  hitherto 
has  had  his  creed  and  system  to  offer,  good  mayhap 
for  the  term  ;  and  each  has  put  it  forth  for  the  truth 
everlasting,  to  drive  the  dagger  to  the  heart  of  time, 
and  put  the  axe  to  human  growth — so  where  at  first 
light  shone  to  light  the  yawning  frog  to  his  wet  ditch, 
there,  with  the  necessitated  revolution  of  men's  minds 
in  the  course  of  ages,  darkness  radiates."  "  In  our 
prayers  we  dedicate  the  world  to  God,  not  calling  Him 
great  for  a  title,  no — showing  we  know  Him  great  in  a 
limitless  world,  Lord  of  a  truth  we  tend  to,  have  not 
grasped.  .  .  .  We  make  prayer  a  part  of  us,  praying 
for  no  gifts,  no  interventions ;  through  the  faith  in 
prayer  opening  the  soul  to  the  undiscerned.  And  take 
this,  my  Beauchamp,  for  the  good  in  prayer,  that  it 
makes  us  repose  on  the  unknown  with  confidence,  makes 
us  flexible  to  change,  makes  us  ready  for  revolution — 


BEAUCHAMP'S    CAREER  133 

for  life  then  !  He  who  has  the  fountain  of  prayer  in 
him  will  not  complain  of  hazards.  Prayer  is  the  recog- 
nition of  laws;  the  soul's  exercise  and  source  of 
strength."  And  Shrapnel  talks  as  he  writes.  One 
evening,  while  Nevil  is  convalescent,  he  is  starting 
for  Bevisham.  Jenny  Denham  reminds  him  that  Cap- 
tain Beauchamp  is  not  as  yet  strong  enough  to  receive 
deputations,  and  Nevil  himself  adds  :  "  No,  no  deputa- 
tions ;  let  them  send  Killick,  if  they  want  to  say 
anything."  "Wrong!"  cries  the  doctor,  "wrong!  wrong! 
Six  men  won't  hurt  you  more  than  one.  .  .  .  Trust  me, 
Beauchamp,  if  we  shun  to  encounter  the  good,  warm 
soul  of  numbers,  our  hearts  are  narrowed  to  them. 
The  business  of  our  modern  world  is  to  open  heart  and 
stretch  out  arms  to  numbers.  In  numbers  we  have 
our  sinews ;  they  are  our  iron  and  gold."  Shrapnel's 
opinions  are  almost  undilutedly  Meredith's;  it  need 
not  be  remarked,  therefore,  that  they  are  excellent. 
But  so  colossal  is  the  range  of  opinion  he  expresses 
that  his  author  leaves  little  room  for  his  personal 
characteristics.  Seymour  Austin's  excellent  summary 
of  Shrapnel's  shortcomings  is  the  more  noteworthy 
in  that  it  is  partially  applicable  to  Beauchamp  also, 
though  in  Beauchamp's  case  social  tact  and  quick 
intuitions  are  his  safeguard  from  an  equal  degree  of 
uncouthness.  "Dr.  Shrapnel,"  says  Austin,  "is  the 
earnest  man,  and  flies  at  politics  as  uneasy  young 
brains  fly  to  literature,  fancying  they  can  write  because 
they  can  write  with  a  pen.  He  perceives  a  bad  adjust- 
ment of  things ;  which  is  correct.  He  is  honest,  and 
takes  his  honesty  for  a  virtue :  and  that  entitles  him 
to  believe  in  himself:  and  that  belief  causes  him  to 
see  in  all  opposition  to  him  the  wrong  he  has  perceived 
in  existing  circumstances :  and  so  in  a  dream  of  power 
he  invokes  the  people:   and  as  they  do  not  stir,  he 


134  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

takes  to  prophecy.  This  is  the  round  of  the  politics  of 
impatience.  The  study  of  politics  should  be  guided 
by  some  light  of  statesmanship,  otherwise  it  comes  to 
this  wild  preaching.  These  men  are  theory-tailors,  not 
politicians." 

Allusion  has  been  made  in  one  of  the  earlier  chapters 
of  this  book  to  Meredith's  antagonism  to  the  Manchester 
School  of  politicians.  The  existence  of  Bcaucliamfs 
Career  makes  an  explanation  of  this  antagonism  less 
necessary  than  otherwise  it  might  have  been.  For 
Beauchamp  sets  out,  accepting  his  uncle's  attitude  to 
Cobden  and  Bright,  and,  later,  comes  to  rank  himself 
on  their  side.  He  keeps,  however,  one  reservation 
throughout ;  his  feeling  for  the  Army  and  Navy  is 
part  of  his  birthright.  When  his  opponents  remind  him 
that  the  Liberals  and  Radicals  grudge  money  for 
armaments,  his  only  reply  is  that  in  this  respect  the 
Conservatives  are  hardly  better.  That  is,  while  his 
intellect  accepts  the  humanitarian  doctrines  of  progress, 
his  class  instincts  revolt  against  certain  immediate 
applications  of  them.  And  this  brings  us  to  a  point 
that  is  better  admitted  at  once.  Both  Meredith  and 
Beauchamp  refer,  at  times,  to  the  middle  and  mercantile 
classes  as  a  strength  to  the  country.  They  force  them- 
selves to  a  concession  and  feel  their  duty  done.  But 
the  only  sentiment  they  possess  is  for  the  classes  above 
and  below  the  commercial.  The  one  appeals  to  their 
tastes,  the  other  is  the  field  of  their  idealism.  The 
intermediate  region  represents  little  more,  to  their 
minds,  than  a  dead-weight  of  obstruction.  Material 
wealth  degenerating  towards  materialism  is  the  curse 
of  their  country ;  for  its  crying  need  is  permeation  with 
ideas.  Among  those  at  the  top  of  the  ladder,  those 
satiated  with  the  good  things  of  this  world,  there  are 
many   indeed    whose    minds    are    difficult    enough    to 


BEAUCHAMP'S   CAREER  135 

enkindle,  but,  partly  because  their  life  is  more  cos- 
mopolitan, these  persons  look  upon  intellectual  brilliancy 
as  a  social  requisite.  And  those  at  the  bottom  of  the 
scale,  those  who  are  starving,  are  open  enough  to  ideas. 
"  Tall  talk,"  says  Everard  Romfrey,  "  is  their  jewelry : 
they  must  have  their  dandification  in  bunkum  " ;  they 
listen  agape  to  all  who  profess  to  prescribe  for  their 
needs.  The  stronghold  of  intellectual  sluggishness, 
then,  is  the  prosperous  but  untraditioned  middle 
class.  In  short,  the  rise  of  the  manufacturing  politician 
appeared  to  betoken  the  rapidly  increasing  national 
influence  of  mere  wealth  divorced  from  tradition.  And 
the  fact  that  the  "  cotton-spinner's "  voice  first  made 
itself  heard  in  the  interests  of  Peace  was  likely  to 
obscure  for  Meredith  and  Beauchamp  the  points  of 
similarity  in  their  creeds.  England's  bungling  into  the 
Crimean  war  occurred,  in  Meredith's  view,  because 
"  we  really  had  been  talking  gigantic  nonsense  of  peace, 
and  of  the  everlastingness  of  the  exchange  of  fruits 
for  money,  with  angels  waving  raw-groceries  of  Eden 
in  joy  of  the  commercial  picture,"  and  the  "  George 
Foxite"  speech  of  Manchester  was  easy  to  mistake 
for  the  trade-at-any-price  cry,  "  the  cry  of  the  belly," 
wishful  to  dominate  the  intellect  and  muscle  of  the 
country. 

Even  if  it  were  in  no  other  way  interesting  or  valu- 
able, Beauchamp 's  Career  would  claim  attention  for  its 
re-creation  of  the  political  atmosphere  of  two  genera- 
tions ago,  with  its  unlikeness  and  likeness  to  that  of  our 
time.  When  the  story  begins,  France  is  still  the  here- 
ditary enemy  of  England,  and  terror  of  French  inva- 
sion a  living  thing.  This  is  augmented  by  distrust  of 
Louis  Napoleon  and  just  indignation  at  his  cowing  of 
Paris  by  the  massacre  of  unarmed  citizens ;  and  these 
feelings   have   been   stirred   by  Lord    Palmerston   and 


136  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

The  Times  into  a  panic.  The  country  is  told  that  it 
may  wake  any  morning  to  find  that  fifty  thousand 
Frenchmen  have  landed  on  its  shores  in  the  night. 
The  panic  grows  to  ludicrous  proportions  ;  the  Militia 
Bill  is  passed  ;  and  the  death  and  funeral  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  aid  in  turning  the  minds  of  the  pro- 
moters of  the  Great  Exhibition  to  war  and  warlike 
exploits.1  Meanwhile  Russia  has  aided  Austria  to 
crush  Kossuth  and  Hungaria,  and  by  so  doing  has 
induced  an  anti-Russian  alliance  between  the  humani- 
tarian and  jingo  sentiment  in  England.  The  powder 
is  stored  :  Russia  crosses  the  Preuth,  and  the  match  is 
alight.  Meredith  pays  tribute  to  "  the  dauntless  Lan- 
castrian who  thundered  like  a  tempest  over  a  gambling 
tent,  disregarded,"  and  to  the  three  Quakers  who,  on  the 
eve  of  the  war,  made  a  pilgrimage  to  the  Czar  beseech- 
ing him  to  give  way  "  for  piety's  sake  " ;  but  is  he,  we 
wonder,  aware  that  facts  connected  with  this  mission 
provide  the  strongest  possible  justification  for  his  anti- 
Press  fulminations?2 

It  is  necessary,  however,  to  guard  against  giving  the 
impression  that  Beauchamp's  Career  is  devoted  to 
political  and  abstract  considerations  at  the  expense  of 
more  personal  interests.  Any  such  notion  would  be 
far  from  the  truth.  Beauchamp's  opinions  are  forceful 
by  virtue  of  the  fire  and  intensity  of  the  nature  holding 
them.  Their  depth  is  made  clear  to  us  in  chapters 
such  as  "  The  Trial  of  Him  "  and  "  The  Two  Passions," 
where  we  see  his  convictions  withstanding  an  almost 
overmastering  desire  to  regard  the  horror  of  Renee's 

1  See  Mr.  Morley's  Life  of  Richard  Cobden,  Vol.  II,  chap.  v.  "  The 
Invasion  Panic." 

2  The  three  Friends— Robert  Charlton,  Henry  Pease,  and  Joseph 
Sturge — were  waiting  in  St.  Petersburg,  at  the  Czar's  request,  for  his 
final  decision,  when  certain  issues  of  The  Times  arrived,  which  by  their 
insulting  and  inflammatory  articles  put  an  end  to  negotiations  for  peace. 


POLITICAL   VIEWS  137 

situation  and  the  hopelessness  of  his  own — their 
common  unhappiness — as  a  reason  for  social  revolt. 
Renee  is  before  him,  maturer  but  no  less  exquisite  than 
at  their  first  meeting  in  Venice ;  her  courage  is  proved 
by  her  flight ;  she  has  riches,  and  she  takes  their 
journey  to  Italy  or  Greece,  and  their  life  there  together, 
for  granted.  "  What,"  Nevil's  spirit  cries  out,  "  has  the 
world  done  for  us,  that  a  joy  so  immeasurable  should 
be  rejected  on  its  behalf?  And  what  have  we  suc- 
ceeded in  doing,  that  the  childish  effort  to  move  it 
should  be  continued  at  such  a  cost  ? "  It  is  against 
temptation  intense  and  subtle  as  this  that  love  for  his 
country  and  Shrapnel's  teaching  prevail. 

From  Beauchamp's  Career  we  may  readily  and  natur- 
ally pass  to  the  political  opinions  of  its  author's  later 
life.  Meredith's  political  utterances  have  been  numer- 
ous, and  they  are  all  noteworthy.  They  cover  a  wide 
range  of  topics,  and  find  expression  in  poetry  as  well  as 
in  prose.  Foresight  and  Patience^  is  a  masterly  philo- 
sophic statement  of  his  general  outlook,  particulars  of 
which  may  be  found  in  his  novels  and  in  the  columns  of 
the  daily  press.  His  Irish  sympathies,  for  instance, 
expressed  with  much  clearness  in  Diana,  provide  two 
articles  in  reference  to  the  Home  Rule  controversy  of 
1886.  The  first,  A  Pause  in  the  Strife?  deals  with 
Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  Bill,  and  is  prophetic  as  well  as 
illuminating.  Mr.  Gladstone,  Meredith  says,  "  has  not 
been  defeated.  The  question  set  on  fire  by  him  will 
never  be  extinguished  until  the  combustible  matter  has 
gone  to  ashes.  But  personally  he  meets  a  sharp  rebuff. 
The  Tories  may  well  raise  hurrahs  over  that.  Radicals 
have  to  admit  it,  and  point  to  the  grounds  of  it.  Be- 
tween a  man's  enemies  and  his  friends  there  comes  out 

1  A  Reading  of  Life.     Published  in  the  National  A'evitw,  1894. 
a  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  July  9th,  1886. 


138  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

a  rough  painting  of  his  character,  not  without  a  resem- 
blance to  the  final  summary,  albeit  wanting  in  the 
justly  delicate  historical  touch  to  particular  features. 
On  one  side  Mr.  Gladstone  is  abused  as  the  '  one  man 
power,'  lauded  on  the  other  for  his  marvellous  intuition 
of  the  popular  will.  One  can  believe  that  he  scarcely 
wishes  to  act  dictatorially,  and  full  surely  his  Egyptian 
policy  was  from  step  to  step  a  misreading  of  the  will  of 
the  English  people.  He  went  forth  on  this  campaign 
with  the  finger  of  Egypt  not  ineffectively  levelled 
against  him  a  second  time.  Nevertheless  he  does  read 
his  English ;  he  has,  too,  the  fatal  tendency  to  the 
bringing  forth  of  Bills  in  the  manner  of  Jove  big  with 
Minerva.  He  perceived  the  necessity,  and  the  issue  of 
the  necessity ;  clearly  divined  what  must  come,  and 
with  a  higher  motive  than  the  vanity  with  which  his 
enemies  charge  him,  though  not  with  such  high  counsel 
as  Wisdom  at  his  ear,  fell  to  work  on  it  alone,  produced 
the  whole  Bill  alone,  and  then  handed  it  to  his  Cabinet 
to  digest,  too  much  in  love  with  the  thing  he  had  laid 
and  incubated  to  permit  of  any  serious  dismemberment 
of  its  frame.  Hence  the  disruption.  He  worked  for 
the  future,  produced  a  Bill  for  the  future,  and  is  wrecked 
in  the  present.  Probably  he  can  work  in  no  other  way 
than  from  the  impulse  of  his  enthusiasm  solitarily.  It 
is  a  way  of  making  men  overweeningly  in  love  with 
their  creations.  The  consequence  is  likely  to  be  that 
Ireland  will  get  her  full  measure  of  justice  to  appease 
her  cravings  earlier  than  she  would  have  had  so  much 
from  the  United  Liberal  Cabinet,  but  at  a  cost  both  to 
her  and  to  England.  Meanwhile  we  are  to  have  a 
House  of  Commons  incapable  of  conducting  public 
business  ;  the  tradesmen  to  whom  The  Times  addressed 
pathetic  condolences  on  the  loss  of  their  season,  will 
lose  more  than  one;  and  we  shall  be  made  sensible  that 


POLITICAL   VIEWS  139 

we  have  an  enemy  in  our  midst,  until  a  people,  slow  to 
think,  have  taken  counsel  of  their  native  generosity  to 
put  trust  in  the  most  generous  race  on  earth."  The 
second  article,  Concessions  to  the  Celt,  was  published 
in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  October,  1886,  and  the 
whole  situation  is  reviewed  at  length  in  it. 

A  letter  of  Meredith's  addressed  to  the  Dorking 
Women's  Liberal  Association1  is  of  paramount  import- 
ance for  its  definition  of  the  ideals  of  the  party  to  which 
he  belongs  : — "  We  who  believe  in  Liberalism,"  he  says, 
"  do  not  doubt  that  as  women's  intellects  expand  and 
sharpen  they  will  join  with  the  party  of  progress,  which, 
without  rejecting  such  wisdom  as  was  given  by  our 
forefathers,  aims  at  a  condition  of  things  in  harmony 
with  the  wider  and  deeper  knowledge  we  have  won,  the 
nobler  ambition,  the  more  human  interest  in  the  welfare 
of  our  fellows."  To  suggest  that  the  chief  interest  of 
the  letter  lies  in  this  definition  is  not  to  imply  that 
Meredith's  voice  in  regard  to  women's  participation  in 
public  affairs  is  uncertain  in  tone.  He  is  a  staunch 
believer  in  Women's  Suffrage,  and,  spite  of  his  grave 
consciousness  of  feminine  emotionalism  and  timidity, 
he  would  grant  it  at  once.  What  is  meant  is  rather 
that  Meredith's  championship  of  women  in  his  novels 
and  poems  has  been  too  detailed  and  explicit  to  need 
rehearsal,  too  fundamental  and  delicate  to  be  summar- 
ised. And  this  brings  us  face  to  face  with  a  difficulty. 
There  are  persons,  in  our  Colonies  at  least,  who  only 
know  Meredith's  name  in  connection  with  a  suggestion 
in  the  newspapers  of  a  ten  years'  or  limited  contract  for 
marriage.  The  letter  containing  this  suggestion,  which 
appears  to  have  been  commented  on  wherever  English 
is  spoken,  appeared  in  September,  1904.  The  key  to 
its  existence  is  found  in  words  towards  the  close  of  it : 

1  May,  1904. 


i4o  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

"  This  subject  is  kept  too  much  in  darkness.  Air  it ! 
Air  it ! "  To  those  acquainted  with  Meredith's  works, 
or  method  of  thought,  this  tocsin  was  harmless  enough. 
As  an  appeal  to  an  ignorant  and  far  wider  circle  it  can- 
not but  be  regretted.  For  the  man  who  perhaps  of  all 
living  writers  has  the  deepest  conviction  of  the  subtlety 
and  complexity  of  the  interests  that  marriage  involves 
has  appeared  to  treat  them  with  levity.  For  close  on 
fifty  years  he  had  been  speaking  of  the  question  with 
the  caution  and  delicacy  it  demands,  and  without  much 
effect ;  for  once  he  was  betrayed  into  a  manner  of 
speech  to  which  his  countrymen  attended,  not  much  to 
their  credit.  To  attempt  to  wipe  out  the  effect  of  the 
letter  by  isolated  quotation  from  Meredith's  works 
would  be  to  fall  into  similar  error.  But  for  the  benefit 
of  any  who  may  have  viewed  the  demonstration  con- 
tained in  it  as  a  serious  manifesto,  it  may  well  be  com- 
pared with  a  letter  in  Beauchamp's  Career  in  which  Dr. 
Shrapnel  dismisses  individualistic  conceptions  of  mar- 
riage. "  Society,"  he  says,  "  is  our  one  tangible  gain, 
our  one  roofing  and  flooring  in  a  world  of  most  uncer- 
tain structures  built  on  morasses.  Towards  the  laws 
that  support  it  men  hopeful  of  progress  give  their 
adhesion.  If  it  is  martyrdom,  what  then?  Let  martyr- 
dom be.  Contumacy  is  animalism.  The  truer  the 
love,  the  readier  for  sacrifice  !  Rebellion  against  Society 
and  advocacy  of  humanity  run  counter" 

As  the  last  of  our  quotations  from  newspaper  con- 
tributions, space  must  be  found  for  a  letter  written  to 
the  Croydon  electors  on  the  eve  of  the  last  election, 
proof  enough  in  itself  that  Meredith's  seventy-eight 
years  have  not  robbed  his  hand  of  its  cunning.  "  We 
view,"  he  writes,  "  a  stormy  sea  of  the  disruption  of 
parties,  and  Conservatives  will  own,  as  promptly  as 
Liberals  perceive,  that  the  mover  of  this  turbulent  state 


POLITICAL   VIEWS  141 

is  the  life  of  it.  His  supporters,  as  a  righting  body,  are 
swallowed  up  in  his  person.  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain 
was  once  a  light  of  the  Radical  ranks ;  he  is  now 
enrolled  among  the  Tories  ;  he  was  a  Free-trader ;  he 
has  become  a  Protectionist,  and  he  has  been  thought- 
lessly called  a  renegade.  He  is  merely  the  man  of  a 
tremendous  energy  acting  upon  one  idea.  Formerly 
it  was  the  Radical  and  Free-trade ;  now  it  is  the  Tory 
and  Protectionist  idea ;  and  he  is  quite  in  earnest ; 
altogether  at  the  mercy  of  the  idea  animating  him. 
You  see  it  in  his  lean,  long  head  and  adventurous  nose. 
Men  of  such  a  kind  are  dangerous  to  their  country. 
They  are  usually,  as  he  is,  adroit  debaters  ;  persuasive 
speakers ;  energised,  as  he  is,  by  petrol  within  to  drive 
swift  and  defiant  of  opposition  to  a  mark  in  view. 
Mr.  Chamberlain  is  one  of  the  motor-men  occasionally 
let  loose  on  us  to  stir  convulsion.  The  motor-man  of 
Highbury  is  assured  that  he  can  persuade  the  working- 
man  that  by  accepting  a  tax  on  his  loaf  he  will  have 
in  return  full  employment  and  higher  wages — that  is 
to  say,  the  reward  of  a  promise  in  the  clouds  for  a 
positive  dead  loss.  He  would  persuade  the  country 
that  Protection  leads  to  no  war  of  Continental  tariffs, 
nor  to  the  encouragement  of  monopolies,  nor  to  the 
renewal  of  the  times  of  Will  Watch  the  bold  smuggler, 
nor  to  the  various  chicaneries  practised  before  the  days 
of  repeal.  It  would  be  a  demented  country  that  be- 
lieved him.  It  cannot  be  that  Croydon  will  consent  to  be 
ranked  as  one  of  the  crazy,  for,  if  Mr.  Chamberlain  wins, 
the  country  is  on  its  downward  way  at  motor  speed." 

In  outlining  Meredith's  political  opinions,  it  would 
obviously  be  ridiculous  to  confine  our  references  to 
Great  Britain  or  even  to  British  dominions.  "The 
world,"  he  has  said,  "is  being  visibly  universalised. 
To  deny  us  this  larger  citizenship  is  the  worst  pro- 


142  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

vincialism."  His  memorial  to  the  struggle  for  Italian 
Independence  has  been  considered  already;  Harry  Rich- 
mond contains,  in  the  Professor's  indictment  of  England, 
and  Ottilia's  training  and  character,  a  magnificent  tribute 
to  German  culture  and  idealism  ;  Alvan's  account  of 
his  interview  with  Ironsides  in  The  Tragic  Comedians 
is  a  masterly  presentation  of  Ferdinand  Lasalle's  atti- 
tude to  Bismarck  and  his  party.  And,  in  these  latter 
days,  Meredith's  interest  in  Russia  has  been  evinced  in 
practical  forms.  But  among  the  nations  of  Europe 
France  holds  the  largest  place  in  his  heart.  In  regard 
to  his  magnificent  poem,  France,  December,  i8yo} 
we  cannot  do  better  than  refer  the  reader  to  Mr. 
Trevelyan,2  who  quotes  and  enlarges  on  lines  such  as 
these,  of  questioning  and  dismay,  written  in  the  very 
month  when  France  was  laid  low  : — 

We  look  for  her  that  sunlike  stood 

Upon  the  forehead  of  our  day, 

An  orb  of  nations,  radiating  food 

For  body  and  for  mind  alway. 

Where  is  the  Shape  of  glad  array  ; 

The  nervous  hands,  the  front  of  steel, 

The  clarion  tongue  ?    Where  is  the  bold,  proud  face  ? 

We  see  a  vacant  place  ; 

We  hear  an  iron  heel. 

and  these  of  tribute  and  thanksgiving  for  her  lead  in 

I7°9«         O  she  that  made  the  brave  appeal 

For  manhood  when  our  time  was  dark, 
And  from-  our  fetters  drove  the  spark 
Which  was  as  lightning  to  reveal 
New  seasons,  with  the  swifter  play 
Of  pulses,  and  benigner  day  ; 
She  that  divinely  shook  the  dead 
From  living  man  ;  that  stretched  ahead 
Her  resolute  forefinger  straight, 
And  marched  toward  the  gloomy  gate 
Of  earth's  Untried.  .  .  . 

1  The  Fortnightly  Review,  January,    1871.     Republished  in   Odes  in 
Contribution  to  the  Song  of  French  History,  1898. 

2  The  Poetry  and  Philosophy  of  George  Meredith.     G.  M.  Trevelyan. 


POLITICAL   VIEWS  143 

A  constant  reader  of  French  literature,  both  con- 
temporary and  classic,  Meredith  has  scattered  apprecia- 
tive references  to  France  and  her  people  up  and  down 
the  pages  of  his  books.  Rente's  features  had  "  the  soft 
irregularities  which  run  to  rarities  of  beauty  as  the 
ripple  rocks  the  light ;  mouth,  eyes,  brows,  nostrils, 
and  bloomy  cheeks  played  into  one  another  liquidly ; 
thought  flew,  tongue  followed,  and  the  flash  of  meaning 
quivered  over  them  like  night  lightning."  She  was  not 
so  beautiful  a  woman  as  Cecilia,  but  "  on  which,"  we  are 
asked,  "does  the  eye  linger  longest?  which  draws  the 
heart  ?  a  radiant  landscape,  where  the  tall,  ripe  wheat 
flashes  between  shadow  and  shine  in  the  stately  march 
of  Summer,  or  the  peep  into  dewy  woodland  on  to  dark 
water?"  Alvan  compares  Clotilde  with  Paris,  "his 
beloved  of  cities — the  symbolised  goddess  of  the  light- 
ning brain  that  is  quick  to  conceive,  eager  to  realise 
ideas,  impassioned  for  her  hero,  but  ever  putting  him  to 
proof,  graceful  beyond  all  rhyme,  colloquial  as  never  the 
Muse ;  light  in  light  hands,  yet  valiant  unto  death  for 
a  principle ;  and  therefore  not  light,  anything  but  light  in 
strong  hands,  very  steadfast  rather  :  and  oh  !  constantly 
entertaining."  The  French  people  avoid  the  "  malady  of 
sameness,  our  modern  malady"  :  they  are  entertaining, 
they  are  complex  ;  and  perhaps  it  is  for  this  latter  quality 
that  Meredith,  not  uncharacteristically,  admires  them 
most.  "  They  are  the  most  mixed  of  any  European  nation, 
so  they  are  packed  with  contrasts  :  they  are  full  of  senti- 
ment, they  are  sharply  logical,  free-thinkers,  devotees ; 
affectionate,  ferocious,  frivolous,  tenacious ;  the  passion  of 
the  season  operating  like  sun  or  moon  on  their  qualities  ; 
and  they  can  reach  to  ideality  out  of  sensualism.  Below 
your  level,  they  are  above  it:  a  paradox  is  at  home  with 
them.'"1     "The  most  mixed  of  any  European  nation," 

1  One  of  our  Conquerors,  chapter  XI. 


H4  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

that,  from  Meredith,  is  the  choicest  of  compliments  ; 
for  he  entertains  the  firmest  belief  in  the  beneficial 
effects  of  international  marriages.  He  almost  always 
requires  that  the  English  blood  of  his  heroines  shall  be 
vivified  by  a  strain  of  Irish  or  Welsh  ;  Emilia's  is  of 
course  half  Italian,  and  Aminta's  is  enlivened  by  an 
admixture  of  Spanish.  Moreover,  his  often-expressed 
belief  in  the  fast-arriving  supremacy  of  the  United 
States  among  English-speaking  peoples,  is  largely  based 
on  their  cosmopolitanism  and  mingling  of  nationalities. 
It  is  well  known  that  Meredith,  among  other  media, 
has  turned  also  to  poetry  for  the  expression  of  his 
political  ideals.  In  the  space  at  our  disposal  it  would 
be  impossible  to  make  anything  approaching  a  complete 
survey  of  his  political  poems ;  but  The  Empty  Purse 
has  elsewhere  received  attention,  and  mention  at  least 
must  be  made  here  of  the  sonnet  To  J.  M.}  of  the 
Lines  to  the  same  in  the  Fortnightly  Review?  and 
the  sonnets  At  the  Close*  and  Hawardenf  the  Odes 
in  Contribution  to  French  History,  and  last,  and  most 
important  of  all,  the  poem  Foresight  and  Patie?iceb 
already  alluded  to.  Meredith  has  declared  his  con- 
viction that  our  present  hope  is  in  Liberalism,  but 
that  Liberalism  cannot  hold  together  except  on  an 
animate  and  animating  principle.  In  one  sense  he 
always  has  been,  and  always  will  be,  a  fighter  :  he  is 
firmly  persuaded  that  "  submission  to  evil  is  a  distinct 
evil  in  itself";  but  no  man  living  more  despises  jingo- 
Imperialism,  or  more  heartily  detests  its  manifestations 
in  the  Press.  His  personal  inclination  being  towards 
French  journalism  with  its  more  delicate  methods  of 
controversy,  he  finds  some  of  the  developments  of  our 

1  To  John  Morley.     Poems  and  Lyrics.  ~  December,  1867. 

3  On  the  South  African  War,  written  in  October,  1899.     A  heading 
of  Life. 

4  A  Reading  of  Life.  °  A  Reading  of  Life. 


POLITICAL   VIEWS  145 

latter-day  newspapers  singularly  difficult  to  bear.  He 
said  in  conversation  with  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead,  in  March, 
1904,  "  I  hold  as  strongly  as  ever  I  did  to  the  reality  of 
the  general  onward  sweep  of  the  human  race ;  but  as 
to  whether  the  English  are  keeping  pace  in  that  move- 
ment I  have  my  doubts.  Some  thirty  years  ago  I  began 
to  feel  this,  and  mentioned  it  to  a  great  friend  of  mine, 
one  of  our  modern  statesmen,  but  he  would  not  hear  of 
it.  The  other  day  when  I  repeated  my  fears  to  him,  he 
sighed  heavily,  and  said  he  feared  it  was  too  true,  and 
that  our  fatal  lack  of  imagination  was  at  the  bottom  of 
it  all."  In  Foresight  and  Patience  he  has  made  clear 
to  us  that  his  trust  in  Liberalism,  his  faith  in  democracy, 
is  no  facile  optimism  based  on  blinking  or  ignorance 
of  facts.  He  sees  the  millions  as  they  are,  and  Fore- 
sight— the  spirit  of  progress  in  his  dialogue — expresses 
what  he  sees  : — 

Their  field  of  tares  they  take  for  pasture  grass. 
How  waken  them  that  have  not  any  bent 
Save  browsing — the  concrete  indifferent ! 
Friend  Lucifer  supplies  them  solid  stuff: 
They  fear  not  for  the  race  when  full  the  trough. 
They  have  much  fear  of  giving  up  the  ghost  ; 
And  these  are  of  mankind  the  unnumbered  host. 

Admit  some  other  features  :  Faithless,  mean  ; 
Encased  in  matter ;  vowed  to  Gods  obscene; 
Contemptuous  of  the  impalpable,  it  swells 
On  Doubt ;  for  pastime  swallows  miracles. 

Patience,  admitting  the  truth  of  the  indictment,  points 
out  to  Foresight  that  our  age's  special  task  is  the  broad- 
ening and  strengthening  of  foundations,  and  that  this 
work  has  already  begun.  Foresight  listens  reproved, 
and  rejoins  : — 

That  rings  of  truth  !     More  do  your  people  thrive  ; 

Your  many  are  more  merrily  alive 

Than  erewhile  when  I  gloried  in  the  page 

Of  radiant  singer  and  anointed  sage. 


146  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Greece  was  my  lamp  :  burnt  out  for  lack  of  oil  ; 
Rome,  Python  Rome,  prey  of  its  robber  spoil ! 
All  structures  built  upon  a  narrow  space 
Must  fall,  for  having  not  your  hosts  for  base. 

And  aided  by  Patience,  the  spirit  of  Progress  is  enabled 
to  close  the  dialogue  and  the  poem  thus  : — 

Advantage  to  the  Many  :  that  we  name 

God's  voice  ;  have  there  the  surety  in  our  aim. 

This  thought  unto  my  sister  do  I  owe, 

And  irony  and  satire  off  me  throw.  .  .  . 

Now  let  the  perils  thicken  :  clearer  seen, 

Your  Chieftain  Mind  mounts  over  them  serene. 

Who  never  yet  of  scattered  lamps  was  born 

To  speed  a  world,  a  marching  world  to  warn, 

But  sunward  from  the  vivid  Many  springs, 

Counts  conquest  but  a  step,  and  through  disaster  sings. 


CHAPTER    XII 

THE    IDEA   OF   COMEDY,   THE   SAGE 
ENAMOURED,  AND  THE  EGOIST 

MEREDITH'S  Essay  on  Comedy,  though  not  pub- 
lished in  book  form  till  1897,  appeared  first  in 
The  New  Quarterly  Magazine  twenty  years  earlier, 
having  previously  been  delivered  as  a  lecture  at  the 
London  Institution  on  the  1st  of  February  in  the  same 
year.  It  is  presumable  that  the  Comic  Spirit  presided 
in  person  at  this  lecture  ;  and  conjecturable  that  no 
audience  was  summoned  beyond  a  score  of  historic 
notables,  headed  by  Aristophanes  himself,  now  assem- 
bled to  hear  their  contributions  to  the  well-spring  of 
human  laughter  distinguished  and  appreciated  as  they 
had  never  been  before.  Possibly  the  chief  nations  of 
the  modern  world  sent  representatives  also  ;  but  clearly 
these  were  not  expected  and,  if  they  came,  must  in 
most  cases  have  enjoyed  the  lecture  less.  We  can 
believe  that  the  company  seldom,  if  ever,  joined  in  the 
collective  laugh,  except  for  one  grand  outburst  at  the 
expense  of  an  unhappy  Arab,  evidently  admitted  by 
mistake.  The  general  aspect  was  of  an  intellectual 
banquet,  a  feast  of  the  sly  smile. 

The  ten  years  now  elapsed  since  the  final  publication 
of  the  lecture  have  given  the  world  opportunity  to  take 
the  flavour  of  a  dish,  which,  when  first  offered,  touched 
the  common  palate  with  so  tempered,  so  refined  a 
subtlety,  that  its  lasting  qualities  must  have  been 
missed.    To  read  the  essay  once  is  to  be  stimulated  and 

147 


148  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

entertained  ;  but  it  is  only  after  many  readings  that  a 
normal  mind  can  hope  to  comprehend  the  completeness, 
the  precision,  the  finality  of  what  is  said.  Not  only  is 
the  nature  of  the  Comic  itself  defined,  but  the  various 
emotions  which  may  enter  into  it  and  transform  it  are 
distinguished  and  interrelated  with  consummate  skill, 
and  in  language  of  which  the  only  difficulty  is  the  diffi- 
culty inherent  in  the  subject.  A  more  exhaustive 
treatment  is  unimaginable.  Satire,  Irony,  Humour  are 
perfectly  delineated  in  all  their  grades,  with  a  hint  for 
each  as  to  its  true  place  in  literature  and  in  life.  "  The 
Satirist  is  a  moral  agent,  often  a  social  scavenger,  work- 
ing on  a  storage  of  bile.  The  Ironeist  is  one  thing  or 
another,  according  to  his  caprice  ;  Irony  is  the  humour 
of  Satire ;  it  may  be  savage  as  in  Swift,  with  a  moral 
object,  or  sedate,  as  in  Gibbon,  with  a  malicious.  .  .  . 
The  stroke  of  the  great  humourist  is  world-wide,  with 
lights  of  Tragedy  in  his  laughter."  The  picture  is  com- 
pleted by  a  criticism  of  the  literature  of  Comedy,  which, 
for  buoyancy  and  brilliancy  of  writing,  for  delicacy  and 
depth  of  understanding,  equals  the  more  abstract  por- 
tions of  the  work.  The  inspiration  of  the  Comic  Muse 
herself  is  recognisable  most  clearly  in  passages  reflect- 
ing upon  some  symptoms  of  Dullness  in  modern  life. 
"  If  the  Comic  idea  prevailed  with  us,  and  we  had  an 
Aristophanes  to  barb  and  wing  it,  we  should  be  breath- 
ing air  of  Athens.  Prosers  now  pouring  forth  on  us 
like  public  fountains  would  be  cut  short  in  the  street 
and  left  blinking,  dumb  as  pillar-posts,  with  letters 
thrust  into  their  mouths."  One  thing,  at  least,  is  cer- 
tain— that  if  the  Comic  idea  does  not  prevail  among  us, 
the  reason  is  not  that  we  lack  a  leader. 

The  main  purpose  of  the  Essay  is  to  define  the 
spirit  which  Meredith  considers  to  be  the  tutelary 
genius   of    civilisation  ;   the    touchstone    of  worth    to 


THE    IDEA   OF   COMEDY  149 

which,  of  necessity,  he  has  brought  the  characters  of  his 
novels  to  be  tried.  To  his  understanding,  the  meaning 
and  justification  of  individual  experience  and  suffering 
is  each  man's  possibility  of  raising  into  full  and  con- 
scious existence  the  God-like  qualities  that  are  latent 
within  him.  But  no  other  writer  has  so  fully  perceived 
and  so  relentlessly  expressed  the  immensity  of  the  task. 
The  main  theme  of  his  novels,  and  indeed  of  many  of 
his  poems,  is  the  purification  of  rebellious  and  intem- 
perate youth  :  a  purification  which  to  his  mind  can  only 
be  effected  by  experience  in  the  main  painful  to  the 
natural  Ego  ;  by  an  Ordeal  which  he  invariably  con- 
ceives as  fiery.  On  a  friend's  judgment  in  regard  to 
Meredith's  first  great  novel,  James  Thomson  wrote  to 
him  :  "  Neither  she  or  any  other  woman,  and  scarcely 
any  man,  will  ever  forgive  you  the  cruel,  cruel  ending." 
In  this  verdict  on  Richard  Feverel  many  of  Meredith's 
readers  must  at  times  have  been  tempted  to  agree,  and 
certainly  the  only  justification  of  being  called  on  to 
watch  a  nature  like  Lucy  Desborough's  broken  on  the 
wheel  is  a  reinforced  conviction  of  the  educative  value 
of  blood  and  tears.  That  this  is  provided  by  Meredith's 
writing  in  general,  no  student  of  his  novels  or  his  poems 
can  deny.  Yet  at  times  his  insight  becomes  so 
oppressed  with  the  laboriousness  of  the  discipline,  so 
jealous  of  youth's  energy  expended  in  the  mastering 
of  mere  brutishness,  that  from  the  burden  he  has  been 
encouraging  his  fellows  to  undertake  even  his  giant 
shoulders  rebel : 

Not  till  the  fire  is  dying  in  the  grate 
Look  we  for  any  kinship  with  the  stars. 
Oh,  wisdom  never  comes  when  it  is  gold, 
And  the  great  price  we  pay  for  it  full  worth. 
We  have  it  only  when  we  are  half  earth. 
Little  avails  that  coinage  to  the  old.1 

1   Modem  Love. 


150  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

But— and  here  is  the  connection  with  the  Comic  Spirit 
— it  is,  in  some  measure  at  least,  because  we  neglect  the 
help  that  is  at  hand,  that  our  period  of  stumbling  and 
unfruitfulness  becomes  so  prolonged.  For  hovering 
above  us  is  a  mentor,  offspring  of  man's  accumulated 
experience,  who  is  ready  to  be  the  individual's  guardian 
and  guide  in  the  new  epoch  on  which  mankind  is  enter- 
ing. Humanity's  watchword  henceforth  is  Community; 
and  the  prime  test  of  her  children's  effectiveness  is  to 
be  voluntary  adaptation  to,  and  co-ordination  in,  their 
environment.  Or  rather,  it  is  in  co-ordination  that  the 
adaptation  hereafter  required  of  them  is  to  consist.  "  If 
you  believe  that  our  civilisation  is  founded  in  common 
sense  (and  it  is  the  first  condition  of  sanity  to  believe 
it),  you  will,  when  contemplating  men,  discern  a  Spirit 
overhead  ;  not  more  heavenly  than  the  light  flashed  up- 
ward from  glassy  surfaces,  but  luminous  and  watchful; 
never  shooting  beyond  them,  nor  lagging  in  the  rear;  so 
closely  attached  to  them  that  it  may  be  taken  for  a 
slavish  reflex,  until  its  features  are  studied.  It  has  the 
sage's  brows,  and  the  sunny  malice  of  a  faun  lurks  at 
the  corners  of  the  half-closed  lips  drawn  in  an  idle 
wariness  of  half  tension.  That  slim  feasting  smile, 
shaped  like  the  long-bow,  was  once  a  big  round  satyr's 
laugh,  that  flung  up  the  brows  like  a  fortress  lifted  by 
gunpowder.  The  laugh  will  come  again,  but  it  will  be 
of  the  order  of  the  smile,  finely  tempered,  showing  sun- 
light of  the  mind,  mental  richness  rather  than  noisy  enor- 
mity. Its  common  aspect  is  one  of  unsolicitous  obser- 
vation, as  if  surveying  a  full  field  and  having  leisure  to 
dart  on  its  chosen  morsels,  without  any  fluttering  eager- 
ness. Men's  future  upon  earth  does  not  attract  it  ; 
their  honesty  and  shapeliness  in  the  present  does  ;  and 
whenever  they  wax  out  of  proportion,  overblown, 
affected,  pretentious,  bombastical,  hypocritical,  pedantic, 


THE    IDEA   OF   COMEDY  151 

fantastically  delicate;  whenever  it  sees  them  self-deceived 
or  hoodwinked,  given  to  run  riot  in  idolatries,  drifting 
into  vanities,  congregating  in  absurdities,  planning  short- 
sightedly, plotting  dementedly;  whenever  they  are  at 
variance  with  their  professions,  and  violate  the  unwritten 
but  perceptible  laws  binding  them  in  consideration  one 
to  another ;  whenever  they  offend  sound  reason,  fair 
justice  ;  are  false  in  humility,  or  mined  with  conceit, 
individually,  or  in  the  bulk — the  Spirit  overhead  will 
look  humanely  malign  and  cast  an  oblique  light  on 
them,  followed  by  volleys  of  silvery  laughter.  That  is 
the  Comic  Spirit." 

Oh  !  wad  some  power  the  giftie  gie  us 
To  see  oursel'  as  ithers  see  us. 

Burns  saw  the  truth  and  stood  in  need  of  it.  Never, 
until  by  Meredith,  has  it  been  perfectly  worked  out. 
His  conception  is  of  a  spirit  revealing  to  the  individual 
a  standard  of  fitness  and  proportion  in  conduct,  the 
fruit  of  many  minds  ;  an  ideal  of  character,  in  which 
aspiration  unrelated  to  action  is  exposed  as  burlesque. 
He  sees  it  hovering  above  us  continually,  most  apparent 
to  the  eyes  of  others  when  least  visible  to  our  own. 
Its  object  is  to  give  the  individual  a  vision  of  "reality," 
a  part  and  place  in  society  which  shall  cure  him  of  in- 
clination to  posturing  and  pretence.  But  because  the 
Spirit  is  intellectual,  a  fruit  of  man's  brain,  she  cannot 
speak  to  him  through  the  senses.  When  these  are 
uppermost,  and  even  temporarily  have  "  usurped  the 
station  of  their  issue,  mind,"  only  one  avenue  is  open  to 
her.  The  victim  must  be  exposed  to  the  ruder  buffetings 
of  his  fellows,  allowed  to  run  unchecked  on  his  course, 
till  the  antagonism  by  which  he  is  surrounded  awakens 
him  to  consciousness  of  the  spectacle  he  presents. 

Perhaps  the  most  masterly,  and  certainly  the  easiest 
presentation  of  the  thought,  is  in  the  Prelude  to  The 


152  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

Egoist.  The  world,  we  are  told,  is  possessed  of  a  cer- 
tain big  book,  so  inclusive  that  it  might  almost  be 
called  the  Book  of  Earth,  in  which,  since  writing  first 
began,  the  generations  of  men  have  registered  their 
deeds.  This  is  the  Book  of  Egoism.  It  has  grown 
now  so  large  as  to  be  useless  to  mankind  except  under 
some  form  of  condensation.  Where  shall  we  seek  for  a 
method  of  vision  by  which  to  extract  wisdom  from  the 
book — "in  essence,  in  chosen  samples,  digestibly?" 
Transcription,  the  realistic  method,  is  useless,  being 
itself  already,  in  the  main,  responsible  for  the  "  malady 
of  sameness,  our  modern  malady."  If  we  appeal  to 
Science  it  points  backward  to  our  ancestry,  and  in  the 
matter  at  issue  we  can  learn  little  from  apes.  "  Art  is 
the  specific.  The  chief  consideration  for  us  is,  what 
particular  practice  of  Art  in  letters  is  the  best  for  the 
perusal  of  the  Book  of  our  common  wisdom  ;  so  that 
with  clearer  minds  and  livelier  manners  we  may  escape, 
as  it  were,  into  daylight  and  song  from  a  land  of  fog- 
horns. Shall  we  read  it  by  the  watchmaker's  eye 
in  luminous  rings  eruptive  of  the  infinitesimal,  or 
pointed  with  examples  and  types  under  the  broad 
Alpine  survey  of  the  spirit  born  of  our  united  social 
intelligence,  which  is  the  Comic  Spirit  ?  "  The  tale  now 
about  to  be  told  is  of  an  English  gentleman,  offspring 
and  representative  of  a  great  House.  That  House,  like 
all  others,  was  raised  to  its  eminence  upon  Egoism — a 
grand  old  Egoism  that  by  some  force  of  will  or  of 
character  outstripped  its  fellows  to  found  what  we  mean 
by  a  Eamily.  But  as  centuries  have  passed  and  the 
characteristics  of  the  rank  and  file  of  men  have 
changed  and  refined,  ever  new  and  more  complex  forms 
of  superiority  are  demanded  of  the  representatives  of 
such  a  House,  if  its  exaltation  and  prominence  is  not 
to  become  merely  fictitious.     And  above  all  it  is  neces- 


THE   EGOIST  153 

sary  that  there  shall  be  no  reversion,  under  a  modern 
veneer,  to  the  old  policy  of  brute-dominion  and  grab  ; 
no  masquerading  of  a  Norman  baron  in  the  guise  of  a 
gentleman  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  past  time  the 
Comic  Spirit  was  reverent  of  Egoism,  sober,  socially 
valuable,  nationally  serviceable;  but  now  that  its  day  is 
over  and  it  lurks  only  in  disguises  and  under  feigned 
names,  she  hunts  it  mercilessly  as  her  prey.  "  She 
watches  over  sentimentalism  with  a  birch-rod,"  analys- 
ing much  that  is  commonly  termed  love,  showing 
it  merely  to  be  projection  of  self  at  a  new  angle,  a 
seeking  of  the  first  person  in  the  second.  Sir 
Willoughby  Patterne  returns  to  Patterne  Hall  after 
a  three-years'  absence  from  England.  His  constant 
and  adoring  friend  Laetitia  Dale  is  the  first  of  his 
acquaintances  he  meets.  He  springs  from  his  carriage. 
"  '  Laetitia  Dale  ! '  he  said.  He  panted.  '  Your  name  is 
sweet  English  music !  And  are  you  well  ? '  The 
anxious  question  permitted  him  to  read  deeply  in  her 
eyes.  He  found  the  man  he  sought  there,  squeezed  him 
passionately,  and  let  her  go." 

It  must  be  conceded  that  Sir  Willoughby  Patterne 
is  an  extreme  type  of  the  Comic  Spirit's  prey ;  he  is  in 
fact  the  Egoist  even  among  Meredith's  characters. 
And  to  Meredith  Egoism  is  what  Original  Sin  was 
to  our  forefathers,  an  initial  condition  common  to 
all  and  only  to  be  outgrown  by  much  prayer  and 
fasting.  In  the  incident  of  Lieutenant  Patterne's  visit, 
and  in  Sir  Willoughby's  letters  from  America,  we  see 
him  already  immersed  in  his  egoism.  Yet  it  is  almost 
entirely  in  connection  with  his  love  affairs  that  the 
Comic  Spirit's  chase  and  exposure  of  him  is  to  be 
displayed.  For  Meredith  conceives  of  "  love "  as  the 
crucial  experience  of  his  characters.  Richard,  Alvan, 
Evan,  Weyburn,  Fleetwood,  Wilfrid   Pole,  this  is  the 


154  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Ordeal  of  them  all.     The  day  of  his  captured   ideal, 
the  hour  when  that  which  hitherto  has  been  winged 
and  aspiring,  seems  stationed,  held,  nay  even  handed  to 
his  grasp   in   the  person  of  his  beloved,  to   Meredith 
is   the   test   of  a  man's   worth.     Men    of  insight    and 
intelligence   will    not    normally  fall   into   posturing  or 
exaggeration  ;  but  this  ordeal  is  fiery  ;  and,  undergoing 
it,  even  a  Sage  at  times  will  bear  "  hard  likeness  to  the 
toilful    apes  of  youth."     It  is,  he  perceives,  infinitely 
more  difficult  for  a  man  to  recognise  the  nature  of  his 
desires    when    he    can    claim    that    the    well-being    of 
another  and  dearer  self  is  involved  in  their  attainment. 
For  the  individual   is  tempted  then   to    suppose  that 
he  can  work  for  his  friend's  good,  in  separation  from 
the  welfare  of  his  friends'  friends   and  the  world  at 
large,  in  a  way  in  which  he  has  long  ago  learnt  that 
it  is  impossible  to  strive  for  his  own — if  indeed  he  is 
capable  of  learning  anything  at  all.     Meredith  sees  the 
Devil  in  ambuscade  from  the  moment  of  our  incorpora- 
tion of  a  second   person  in  the  unit  of  our  interest. 
Even  the  dullest  of  us,  finding  himself  single-handed 
against  the  world,  is  apt  to  suspect  that  possibly  there 
is   something  amiss  with  his   bearing;  but  the  mock- 
heroic  of  a  world  well  lost  for  love  is  common  enough 
yet.     There   may  appear  something  alien   and   almost 
bloodless  in  the  restraint  and  consideration  for  others 
of  the  Whitworths,  and  Weyburns,  and   Wentworths, 
"the    practised    in    self-mastery,"    who   are    Meredith's 
heroes  ;  but  in  Willoughby's  claim — "  We  two  have  an 
inner  temple  where  the  worship  we  conduct  is  actually 
an  excommunication  of  the  world.    We  abhor  that  beast 
to  adore  that  divinity.      This  gives  us  our  oneness,  our 
isolation,  our  happiness.     This  is  to  love  with  the  soul" 
— one  is  forced  to  recognise  a  theory  that  is  far  from 
uncommon,  though  it  be  suicidal. 


THE   EGOIST  155 

The  conviction  of  the  crucible  nature  of  this 
experience,  implicit  in  his  earliest  novels,  Meredith 
states  explicitly  in  The  Egoist.  "  The  love-season,"  he 
says,  "  is  the  carnival  of  Egoism,  and  it  brings  the 
touch-stone  to  our  natures.  I  speak  of  love,  not  of  the 
mask,  and  not  of  the  flutings  upon  the  theme  of  love, 
but  of  the  passion  ;  a  flame  having,  like  our  mortality, 
death  in  it  as  well  as  life."  He  makes  it  quite  clear, 
moreover,  that  what  he  is  disclosing  of  the  savagery 
of  Sir  Willoughby's  nature  beneath  the  veneer  of  his 
civilisation  is  applicable  "  to  thousands  of  civilised 
males."  It  is  not  only  of  the  courtship  of  Clara 
Middleton  that  he  is  speaking  when  he  says  in  relation 
to  women,  "  It  is  the  palpable  and  material  of  them 
still  which  they  are  tempted  to  flourish  wherewith 
to  invite  and  allay  pursuit :  a  condition  under  which 
the  spiritual,  wherein  their  hope  lies,  languishes.  The 
capaciously  strong  in  soul  among  women  will  ultimately 
detect  an  infinite  grossness  in  the  demand  for  purity, 
infinite,  spotless  bloom.  Earlier  or  later,  they  will  see 
they  have  been  victims  of  the  singular  Egoist,  have 
worn  a  mask  of  ignorance  to  be  named  innocent,  have 
turned  themselves  into  market  produce  for  his  delight, 
and  have  really  abandoned  the  commodity  in  minister- 
ing to  the  lust  for  it,  suffered  themselves  to  be  dragged 
ages  back  in  playing  upon  the  fleshly  innocence  of 
happy  accident  to  gratify  his  jealous  greed  of  possession, 
when  it  should  have  been  their  task  to  set  the  soul 
above  the  fairest  fortune,  and  the  gift  of  strength 
in  women  beyond  ornamental  whiteness."  Meredith 
points  out  in  the  Essay  on  Comedy  that  there  is, 
and  always  must  be,  an  intimate  connection  between 
the  position  of  women  and  the  Comic  Spirit's  existence 
and  effectiveness.  Comedy,  as  he  conceives  it,  is  less 
concerned  with  men's  actions  than  with  tendencies  and 


156  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

tastes  that  are  subtle  and  interfused  in  their  being. 
And  since  a  true  interplay  upon  life  between  men  and 
women  is  only  possible  from  a  common  vantage- 
ground  of  ideas,  women,  poorer  on  the  whole  in 
experience,  can  only  raise  themselves  to  this  wider  out- 
look by  a  strenuous  use  of  their  wits,  and  above  all,  by 
cultivation  of  their  common  sense.  In  swelling  the 
ranks  of  the  sentimentalists,  woman  has  everything  to 
lose  and  nothing  to  gain  ;  her  hope  is  in  increasing 
clearness  of  vision,    fuller  disentanglement  of  thought 

and  sensation —      We  share  the  primal  curse  : 
Together  shake  it  off,  say  we. : 

The  essential  impurity  of  the  masculine  identification 
of  innocence  and  ignorance  in  women  it  has  been 
one  of  Meredith's  chief  tasks  to  expose.  In  The  Ballad 
of  Fair  Ladies  in  Revolt,  in  abstract  terms,  he  has 
done  it  inimitably.  In  The  Sage  Enamoured  and  the 
Honest  Lady  he  has  fearlessly  dared,  and  sustainedly 
exalted,  the  statement  of  both  sides  of  the  most  inti- 
mate and  intricate  of  human  questions,  in  a  way  no 
other  living  writer  could  have  paralleled.  In  this  poem 
the  Sage's  ultimate  position  is  the  very  antithesis  of  the 
Egoist's  ;  he  is  at  one  end  of  the  scale  while  Willoughby 
is  at  the  other ;  but  the  subject  and  treatment  of  the 
theme  on  which  they  are  both  to  discourse  is  similar 
enough  in  essentials  to  justify  their  interrelation. 
The  Sage,  a  man  of  many-sided  powers  and  interests, 
finds  himself  drawn  to  a  woman  by  her  graciousness 
and  beauty,  in  a  manner  and  degree  that  even  in  his 
hot-blooded  youth  he  should  have  imagined  impossible. 
She  reciprocates  the  feeling  sufficiently  to  find  herself 
constrained  to  put  an  end  to  his  passion.  In  order  to 
do  this  she  must  tell  him  the  story  of  her  life.  But 
the  task  is  not  easy.     Attempting  honest  speech,  she 

1  A  Ballad  of  Fair  Ladies  in  Revolt. 


THE    SAGE    ENAMOURED  157 

finds  that  a  mental  habit  of  glossing  and  clothing 
compromising  facts  has  affected  her  choice  of  words. 
She  wishes  the  truth  to  be  conveyed,  but  desires  her 
friend's  image  of  her  to  remain  unaffected  by  it.  The 
picture  she  sketches  is  of  two  young  and  passionate 
lovers  hurled  by  outraged  society  into  a  yet  closer  em- 
brace, pledged  more  deeply  to  one  another  by  the 
imminent  danger  of  forced  severance.  They  err,  and 
in  the  world's  eyes  are  ruined  ;  but  they  make  their 
appeal  to  the  Court  of  Love,  and  are  able  to  esteem 
their  gain  above  their  loss — 

invoke  an  advocate 
In  passion's  purity,  thereby  redeemed. 

The  Sage,  her  lover,  now  become  her  judge,  remains 
mute  and  unresponsive.  He  envelops  her  in  an  icy 
silence  that  freezes  her  burning  plea ;  and  in  her  bitter- 
ness she  sees  him  as  a  leader  of  the  male  herd  stoning 
the  women  they  abase.  But  her  words  reverberate,  as 
it  were,  in  the  emptiness,  and,  hearing  them,  she  recog- 
nises their  hollowness. 

She  no  longer  glosses  her  offence,  but  grasps  at  its 
ugliest,  its  scriptural,  title.  Thereupon  natural  repul- 
sion in  her  hearer  gives  place  to  something  higher  and 

nobler —  Crimson  currents  ran 

From  senses  up  to  thoughts, 

enabling  him  to  realise  in  the  valiancy  of  this  sacrifice 
for  his  enlightenment  a  flower  more  delicate  than  any 
rosebud  of  guileless  maidenhood,  and  to  grasp  some- 
thing of  the  need  of  understanding  involved  in  the 
effort  necessary  to  such  a  confession. 

He  gave  her  of  the  deep  well  she  had  sprung  ; 
And  name  it  gratitude,  the  word  is  poor. 
But  name  it  gratitude,  is  aught  as  rare 
From  sex  to  sex  ?     And  let  it  have  survived 
Their  conflict,  comes  the  peace  between  the  pair, 
Unknown  to  thousands  husbanded  and  wived  : 


158  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Unknown  to  Passion,  generous  for  prey  : 
Unknown  to  Love,  too  blissful  in  a  truce. 
Their  tenderest  of  self  did  each  one  slay  ; 
His  cloak  of  dignity,  her  fleur  de  luce  ; 
Her  lily  flower,  and  his  abolla  cloak, 
Things  living,  slew  they,  and  no  artery  bled. 
A  moment  of  some  sacrificial  smoke 
They  passed,  and  were  the  dearer  for  their  dead. 

The  bulk  of  the  poem  now  deals  with  the  Sage's 
treatment  of  the  issues  raised  by  the  personal  situation, 
to  the  heart  of  which  we  have  been  introduced.  And 
this  method,  call  it  scientific  or  inartistic  if  you  will, 
like  it  or  leave  it,  is  eminently  characteristic  of  Mere- 
dith's work.  Again  and  again  in  his  novels  he  looks 
over  his  own  shoulder,  as  it  were,  to  comment  on  his  in- 
veterate habit  of  proceeding  from  the  particular  to  the 
general,  and  in  the  possibility  of  so  doing  he  has  seen 
the  main  claim  of  the  particular  upon  our  attention. 
His  anticipation  of  criticism  in  this  case  takes  the 
form  of  a  statement  in  regard  to  the  Sage's  treatment 
of  his  friend  : — 

He  passed  her  through  the  sermon's  dull  defile, 

and  the  statement  in  one  sense  is  an  apology.  No  one, 
he  would  say,  deplores  a  tendency  to  dullness  and  ser- 
monising on  the  part  of  his  characters  more  deeply 
than  their  creator.  But  the  subject  under  consideration 
appears  to  him  too  profoundly  important  for  the  discus- 
sion of  it  to  be  limited  by  any  claims  extraneous  to  its 
own.  An  artistic  setting,  a  certain  vitalising  of  the 
problem  in  particular  human  experience,  was  essential 
to  its  presentment ;  but  to  limit  it  to  these  would  be  to 
beg  the  points  of  interest,  to  neglect  to  draw  attention 
to  the  elements  within  it  that  really  are  obscure.  Mere- 
dith's Sage,  regrettably,  may  be  dull ;  but  none  the  less 
his  claim  to  the  title  that  he  bears  is  based  on  his  capa- 
city for  classifying  and  relating  the  phenomena  of  his 


THE   SAGE   ENAMOURED  159 

life  to  a  world  that  is  outside  itself:  for  passing  quickly 
from  purely  personal  discomfort  to  a  vision  of  the  truly 
grievous  elements  the  tale  he  has  heard  contains. 
Passionate  human  love,  a  force  that  garnered  and 
cherished  should  have  been  serviceable  for  a  lifetime, 
by  recklessness  has  been  reduced  to 

These  few  last 
Hot  quintessential  drops  of  bryony  juice, 
Squeezed  out  in  anguish  :  all  of  that  once  vast ! 

Nevertheless  he  holds  no  brief  for  a  hypocritical 
world,  preserving  its  so-called  purity  at  the  price  of 
gross  injustice,  visiting  punishment  for  a  joint  deed  on 
only  one  of  the  participators.  There  exist  two  oppos- 
ing camps  in  this  matter,  but  neither  of  them  can  claim 
to  have  reached  a  solution  reconciled  with  the  facts  : 
one  lops  off  a  limb,  a  piece  of  life  itself,  the  other  rebels 
against  the  consequences  issuing  from  indulgence  of  its 
instincts.  By  one  school  Nature  is  accounted  devilish, 
by  the  other  divine.  But  the  intellectual  impasse 
reached  by  both  is  the  same  ;  both 

accept  for  doom 
The  chasm  between  our  passions  and  our  wits. 

It  is  the  old  story — Nature  misread,  taken  as  synony- 
mous with  the  instincts  of  the  flesh,  separated  from 
the  idealisation  of  the  spirit.  The  only  solution  is  to 
recognise  that  man's  mind  and  man's  laws,  whatever 
their  crudity,  are  not  alien  and  opposing  products 
but  are,  no  less  than  his  body,  outcome  of  Nature's 
chastening  discipline  ;  the  one  way  of  escape  from  in- 
dividualistic rebellion  being  to  conceive  the  collective 
mind  of  man  as  "  child  of  her  keen  rod,"  his  earliest  laws 

developing  as  ,.,._, 

r     °  the  blind  progressive  worm 

That  moves  by  touch,  and  thrust  of  linking  rings,1 
.  1  Cf.  The  World's  Advance. 


160  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

his  later  and  more  complex  aims  demanding  and  neces- 
sitating a  deliberate  weighing  of  the  present  with  the 
future,  the  immediate  with  the  remote.  Self-satisfac- 
tion, happiness,  there  are  no  more  fixed  centres  of  these 
than  there  is  a  finite  stable  compound  of  qualities  to  be 
termed  Human  Nature.  Man's  conception  of  pleasure 
is  changing  and  developing  with  his  character.  And 
wherever  he  has  attempted  to  substitute  an  ideal  end 
for  an  immediate  satisfaction,  it  follows  that  he  has  dis- 
cerned, afar  and  flickering,  but  still  discerned,  the  beacon 
of  some  higher  joy.  In  a  humanity  thus  developing, 
many  desires  fall  away  and  are  superseded.  The 
problem  raised  by  sexual  passion  is  unique,  because, 
being  the  channel  of  Life  itself,  its  continuance  is 
essential.  The  question  of  its  ultimate  place  in  society 
is  insistent,  and  refuses  to  be  shelved  or  set  aside. 
Clearly  its  blind  assertiveness  must  be  checked  and 
controlled  by  ideals  touching  the  welfare  of  the  race  to 
be.  But  how  and  in  what  manner  ?  The  answer  must 
be  comprehensive,  and  to  frame  it  man  and  woman, 

the  twain  beside  our  vital  flood, 
Now  on  opposing  banks,  the  twain  at  strife 

must  face  the  problem  considerately,  and  in  unison  ; 

Instruct  in  deeper  than  Convenience, 
In  higher  than  the  harvest  of  a  year. 

In  Meredith's  hands,  the  Sage's  power  of  abstract 
judgment  betokens  more,  and  not  less,  capacity  for 
sympathy  and  emotion.  The  era  he  has  been  fore- 
seeing, when  man  and  woman  shall  meet  to  mate  as 
peers,  has  not  yet  arrived.  And  meanwhile,  in  such  a 
situation  as  the  present,  abstractly  considered,  a  tender- 
ness deeper  than  philanthropy  appears  to  him  the 

step  to  right  the  loaded  scales 
Displaying  woman  shamefully  outweighed. 


THE    SAGE    ENAMOURED  161 

By  his  fearless  treatment  of  the  problem  of  sex  and  the 
long  discipline  needful  to  its  solution,  the  Sage  has 
released  his  companion  from  the  prison-house  of  her 
isolation,  put  her  once  more  into  step  with  her  fellows, 
taught  her  to  hear  again  the  heart-beat  of  the  world. 
She  no  longer  shrinks  from,  or  slurs  over,  the  fact  of  her 
experience  ;  she  accepts  it  as  the  road  to  her  awakened 
understanding  of  comradeship  and  of  law,  the  ground- 
work of  her  new  feeling  for  the  tranquil  and  impersonal : 

The  peace,  the  homely  skies,  the  springs  that  welled  ; 
Love,  the  large  love  that  folds  the  multitude. 

His  own  reward  is  present  too,  in  his  quickened  and 
deepened  conception  of  loveliness ;  the  old  outward 
attraction  is  still  obvious,  but  it  shrinks  to  insignificance 
before  the  beauty  of  spirit  he  has  now  apprehended  : 

Soul's  chastity  in  honesty,  and  this 
With  beauty,  made  the  dower  to  men  refused. 
And  little  do  they  know  the  prize  they  miss  ; 
Which  is  their  happy  fortune  !     Thus  he  mused. 

The  prospect  open  to  these  lovers  is  widely  different 
from  that  of  the  lady's  youthful  desires  or  the  Sage's 
preconception.  Not  vivid  in  colour,  or  striking  in  out- 
line, it  is  strangely  fair  to  view.  No  splendid  and 
triumphant  dawn  is  theirs ;  only  daybreak  on  a  quiet 

day  '•  He  needed  her  quick  thirst 

For  renovated  earth :  on  earth  she  gazed, 
With  humble  aim  to  foot  beside  the  wise. 
Lo,  where  the  eyelashes  of  night  are  raised 
Yet  lowly  over  morning's  pure  grey  eyes. 

The  Egoist  is  usually  considered  to  be  the  most 
characteristic  of  Meredith's  utterances.  Certainly  it 
affords  the  best  possible  proof  that  it  is  natural  to  him 
to  evolve  his  stories  from  an  abstract  rather  than  a 
dramatic  foundation.  At  the  present  moment,  such  a 
method  is  unfashionable,  and  the  statement  may  be  taken 
as  implying   disparagement  of  his  gifts  as  an   artist- 

M 


1 62  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Any  such  conclusion  would  be  unjust.     Many  of  us  may 
prefer  novels  in  which  we  are  not  presented  at  the  out- 
set with  the  author's  thesis  and  preconception,  favoured 
with  the  prospect  of  an  exercise  on  an  already  enunci- 
ated  problem  ;   but,  if  we  are   open-minded,  accentu- 
ation of  our  distaste  for  the  method  is  likely  in  this  case 
to  end  in  amazement  at  the  dramatic  and  imaginative 
power  which  has  exalted  and  impassioned  it.      That 
Meredith  knows  all  that  is  to  be  known  of  Comedy  in 
the  abstract,  readers  of  the  Essay  do  not  need  to  be 
convinced.     As  a  reviewer  of  other  men's  comedies  he 
is  supreme.    But  the  qualifications  necessary  to  a  literary 
critic,  erudition  and  ingenuity  and  balance  of  sympathy, 
belong  in  themselves  to  the  "watchmaker's"  equipment 
rather  than  the  dramatist's,  and  might  easily  prove  a 
burden    too    clogging   and    cumbrous   for   an  "  Alpine 
survey."     The  book  is  long ;  the  story  proper  occupies 
a  few  days  only,  yet  its  chronicle  runs  to  near  upon  five 
hundred  pages.     The  dialogue  is  brilliant,  but  occasion- 
ally its  brilliancy  and  complexity  prove  overwhelming. 
There  are  scenes  towards  the  close  where  five  or  six 
persons,  each  labouring  under  a  separate  misconception, 
attempt   to   converse,  and  the  effect  on  a  reader,  not 
always  informed  which  character  is  speaking,  is  bewilder- 
ment.    In  the  process  of  Willoughby's  efforts  to  shield 
himself  at  his  neighbour's  expense,  the  ground  beneath 
the  actors  is  mined  in  every  direction,  and  blunder  is 
heaped    upon    blunder ;  yet    the    delicacy   and    inter- 
threading  of  motive  is  sufficient  to  prevent  the  result 
from  being  farcical.     It  is  less  so,  indeed,  as  the  story 
develops,  than  in  the  earlier,  more  psychological  part  of 
the  book,  where  the  reader  was  called   on  to  witness 
Willoughby's  more  tedious  and  less  credible  self-revela- 
tions.    Certain  critics  have  assumed  that  because  his 
exposure  convinces  us,  and  is  meant  to  convince  us, 


THE   EGOIST  r63 

anew  of  our  egoism,  we  are  each  called  on  to  acclaim  in 
Willoughby  a  counterpart  of  ourselves.  To  do  this  is 
to  introduce  a  standard  of  realism  disavowed  by  the 
author,  and  to  miss  his  conception  of  Comedy  as  a 
"  stillatory "— a  condenser.  The  aim  of  the  book  is 
Comic  drama  in  the  style  of  Moliere,  exposition  of  a 
single  typical  character  ;  and  within  these  limits  it  must 
be  judged.  The  limits  are  severe,  and  afford  little  or  no 
scope  for  the  tragic  intensity  of  which  the  author  of 
Richard Feverel  and  Sandra  Belloni  is  capable— a  fact 
of  which  Meredith  himself  is  fully  aware  : 

For  this  the  Comic  Muse  exacts  of  creatures 
Appealing  to  the  fount  of  tears  ;  that  they 
Strive  never  to  outleap  our  human  features 
And  do  right  reason's  ordinance  obey, 
In  peril  of  the  hum  to  laughter  nighest. 
But  prove  they  under  stress  of  action's  fire 
Nobleness,  to  that  test  of  Reason  highest 
She  bows  ;  she  waves  for  them  the  loftier  lyre. 

Nevertheless,  if  we  turn,  in  so  far  as  such  division  is 
practicable  in  a  work  that  is  united  and  organic,  from 
the  central  study  to  the  subsidiary  characterisations  of 
the  book,  we  shall  find  them  sufficient  to  have  served 
an  ordinary  novelist  for  half  a  dozen  novels  at  least. 
Clara,  Vernon,  Dr.  Middleton,  Crossjay,  De  Craye,  even 
Laetitia  herself,  have  a  vital  and  developing  existence. 
They  are  compelled  in  certain  directions,  of  course,  by 
the  fact  that  they  are  members  of  the  Egoist's  house- 
hold ;  but  they  have  also  a  full  life  of  their  own,  over  and 
above  that  which  is  required  for  the  exposure  of  Wil- 
loughby's  errors.  With  the  arrival  of  Dr.  Middleton 
and  his  daughter  at  Patterne  Hall,  and  the  overt  battle 
between  the  claim  of  Clara's  pledged  word  to  Sir 
Willoughby  and  her  growing  distaste  for  the  prospect 
of  its  fulfilment,  vivid  characterisation  may  be  said  to 
begin.      The    imminence   and    inevitability   of   Clara's 


k>i  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

■Imi'm-Ii-  h.is  been  conveyed  to  US  previously,  chiefly 
through  the  eye,  of  her  contemporaries.  Crossjay, 
•  illei  hi  .  lii. I  sighl  ol  her,  had  run  to  Lajtitia  with 
HOWS   of  B    lady    with   a    merry    face   and    a   liking   for 

the  n. ivy  ;  Vernon  Whitford  suggested  a  delicate  and 
peculiar  gifl  of  responsiveness,  while  Willoughby  pro- 
tested  slightly  overmuch  in  regard  to  her  youth  and 
inexperience.  Mrs.  Mountstuart  Jenkinson,  in  insist- 
ence  on  the  justice  of  her  phrase,  "  a  dainty  rogue  in 
porcelain,"  had  given  Clara's  lover  moments  of  uneasi- 
ness. 

'"  Why  rogue?'  he  asked. 
I  ••.lid     in  porcelain,'  she  replied. 

'  Rogue  perplexes  me.' 

'  Porcelain  explains  it.' 

'  She  has  the  keenest  sense  o\   honour.' 

■  1  .mi  sure  she  is  .1  paragon  o(  rectitude.' 
'She  has  .1  beautiful  bearing.' 

■  The  carriage  of  .1  young  princess.' 

'  1  find  hei  pei  feet' 

'    V.nl  still  she  may  be  a  dainty  rogue  in  porcelain." 
'  Ak-  you  judging  by  '.he  mind  or  the  person,  ma'am?' 

•  Both.' 

"  And  which  is  which  ? ' 

•  [fare's  no  -       v.  on.' 

'  Rogue  ess  of  Patterne  do  not  go  together.' 

\\  h\  no:  }     She  will  be  1  Ity  to  our  neighbour- 

the      JL' 

1  match  with  ■ 

•  r« ... 

V         ce    . 

1   c  -._;   .inv.ise- 

".     .  .'     .      ■■  '  .  .      ■".....;;      ::.::  :h; 

■ 


THE   EGOIST  165 

ated  then,  because  fully  convinced  that  his  decision  to 
exalt  Clara  Middleton  to  the  position  of  his  bride  was 
founded  on  the  assurance  of  her  being  "  essentially- 
feminine,  a  parasite  and  a  chalice " ;  unassisted  later, 
from  preoccupation  with  endeavour  to  instil  his  ideas, 
and  correct  small  tendencies  on  the  part  of  his  be- 
trothed to  think  of  her  mind  as  her  own.  On  one  side, 
irritation  too  incredulous  of  the  possibility  of  revolt  to 
acknowledge  itself  as  uneasiness ;  on  the  other,  a  blind 
hopefulness  that  the  man  she  saw  and  was  attracted  to 
at  first  must  reassert  himself  in  her  lover ;  such  is  the 
position  between  Willoughby  and  Clara  when  the  drama 
begins. 

But  already,  in  its  earliest  beginnings,  it  has  had  an 
observant  spectator,  and  Clara  is  conscious  of  his 
scrutiny.  Since  her  engagement,  Willoughby's  cousin 
and  dependant,  Vernon  Whitford,  has  been  on  a  visit 
to  her  father.  He  has  obviously  avoided  being  alone 
with  her,  but  he  has  subjected  her  fitfully  during  meals 
to  an  uncomfortable,  penetrating  gaze.  At  their  first 
meeting  she  had  liked  his  eyes,  but  lately  their  look 
has  recalled  the  mingled  brooding  and  apprehension 
of  a  parent  bird  on  the  nest.  After  a  certain  conversa- 
tion with  Willoughby  on  the  subject  of  widowhood — 
their  last  interview  before  the  removal  to  Patterne— she 
had  been  conscious  of  actual  relief  in  Vernon's  absence 
and  the  fact  of  not  being  obliged  to  encounter  that 
look.  For  the  rest  she  had  seen  him  chiefly  with 
Crossjay,  and  thought  that  his  tutorly  sharpness  con- 
trasted unfavourably  with  Willoughby's  quasi-paternal 
indulgence.  But  her  judgment  on  this  subject  is 
to  be  modified  by  learning  incidentally  from  Crossjay, 
almost  immediately  on  her  arrival  at  Patterne,  that 
Vernon  Whitford  pays  for,  as  well  as  teaches,  him  ; 
and  by  Vernon's  manifest  anxiety  to  get  the  lad  away 


1 66  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

from  the  place  before  he  is  spoiled.  At  Patterne 
it  is  inevitable  that  Vernon  should  sometimes  be 
thrown  in  her  path.  He  is  merely  a  scholarly  adjunct 
of  the  household,  liable  at  any  moment  to  be  called 
on  to  act  as  Clara's  retainer  in  Willoughby's  absence. 
And  with  him  she  feels  no  need  for  restraint ;  he 
is  devoid  of  graces,  an  execrable  dancer,  and  an 
indifferent  horseman.  As  a  writer  of  letters  to  the 
Press  he  is  useful  to  Willoughby,  and  his  eminence 
as  a  scholar  and  controversialist  adds  a  distinction 
to  Patterne  parallel  in  kind  to  its  reputation  for 
Parisian  cooking.  He  goes  on  his  way  without  the 
smallest  pretension,  and  Clara  notes,  half  regretfully, 
that  he  never  dissents  strongly  from  Sir  Willoughby 
in  speech.  If  it  had  been  possible  for  her  to  see  him 
with  the  eyes  of  a  reader  familiar  with  Meredith's 
other  creations,  she  might,  from  the  outset,  have  been 
more  fully  aware  of  Vernon's  significance.  For  she 
learns,  in  their  first  interview,  that  he  has  been  walking 
off  irritation  with  Crossjay,  and  has  been  nine  and 
a  half  hours  on  foot ;  and  she  surprises  him,  at  their 
second,  asleep  beneath  the  double-blossom  wild  cherry, 
to  which  Willoughby  has  previously  half-mockingly 
alluded  as  "  Vernon's  holy  tree."  "  She  had  a  curiosity 
to  know  the  title  of  the  book  he  would  read  beneath 
those  boughs,  and,  grasping  Crossjay's  hand  fast,  she 
craned  her  neck,  as  one  timorous  of  a  fall  in  peeping 
over  chasms,  for  a  glimpse  of  the  page;  but  im- 
mediately, and  still  with  a  bent  head,  she  turned  her 
face  to  where  the  load  of  virginal  blossom,  whiter  than 
summer-cloud  on  the  sky,  showered  and  drooped  and 
clustered  so  thick  as  to  claim  colour  and  seem  like 
higher  Alpine  snows  in  noon  sunlight,  a  flush  of  white. 
From  deep  to  deeper  heavens  of  white  her  eyes 
perched  and  soared.     Wonder  lived  in  her.     Happiness 


THE   EGOIST  167 

in  the  beauty  of  the  tree  pressed  to  supplant  it,  and 
was  more  mortal  and  narrower.  Reflection  came, 
contracting  her  vision  and  weighing  her  to  earth.  Her 
reflection  was :  '  He  must  be  good  who  loves  to  lie  and 
sleep  beneath  the  branches  of  this  tree  ! '  Clara  would 
rather  have  clung  to  her  first  impression  :  wonder  so 
divine,  so  unbounded,  was  like  soaring  into  homes 
of  angel-crowded  space." 

She,  the  wild  white  cherry,  a  tree, 
Earth-rooted,  tangibly  wood. 
Yet  a  presence  throbbing,  alive,1 

gleams  elsewhere  in  Meredith's  writing  with  more  than 
mortal  beauty  as  banner  and  beacon  of  the  highest. 
And  she  is  Vernon's  guardian  angel  now  ;  for  Rabes- 
qurat,  Queen  of  Illusions,  is  at  hand.  Half-dozing,  he 
has  seen  Clara's  head  above  him,  framed  in  dazzling 
whiteness ;  and  he  is  tempted  to  dwell  on  the  vision, 
after  it  has  disappeared,  as  being  of  spiritual  significance, 
instead  of  what  his  wakened  wits  declare  it,  the  mere 
outcome  of  a  young  lady's  inquisitiveness.  The  sharp 
struggle  that  ensues  gives  scope  for  subtle  analysis,  in 
which  Meredith  reveals  certain  characteristics  of  men  he 
believes  to  be  earth's  foremost.  Of  the  cherishing 
and  dallying  with  any  such  fancy  as  that  which  Vernon 
dismisses,  he  says:  "Just  outside  reality,  it  illumines, 
enriches,  and  softens  real  things ;  and  to  desire  it  in 
preference  to  the  simple  fact,  is  a  damning  proof  of 
enervation.  Such  was  Vernon's  winding  up  of  his  brief 
drama  of  fantasy.  He  was  aware  of  the  fantastical 
element  in  him  and  soon  had  it  under.  Which  of  us 
who  is  of  any  worth  is  without  it  ?  He  had  not  much 
vanity  to  trouble  him,  and  passion  was  quiet,  so  his  task 
was  not  gigantic.  Especially  be  it  remarked,  that  he 
was  a  man  of  quick  pace,  the  sovereign  remedy  for  the 

1  A  Faith  on  Trial. 


168  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

dispersing  of  mental  fen-mist.  He  had  tried  it,  and 
knew  that  nonsense  is  to  be  walked  off."  After  this 
the  reader  may  desire  to  be  told  of  Vernon's  part  in 
the  unfolding  of  Clara  Middleton's  romance  ;  but  of 
his  bearing  and  influence  in  life  he  will  not  need  to  be 
informed. 

It  has  been  said  of  Dr.  Middleton  that  he  belongs  to 
the  families  of  Crotchet  Castle  and  Gryll  Grange.  The 
dedication  of  his  earliest  volume  of  poems  bears  witness 
to  Meredith's  reverence  and  admiration  for  his  father-in- 
law  ;  and  to  Peacock's  influence  on  Meredith's  work  we 
have  the  testimony  of  no  less  astute  a  critic  than  James 
Thomson.  Yet,  though  a  relationship  certainly  exists, 
it  is  collateral  rather  than  in  the  direct  line  of  descent. 
Dr.  Middleton  unites  with  Dr.  Folliott  in  his  respect  for 
the  classics,  and  his  esteem  for  good  cooking.  Their 
not  very  consistent  ideas  of  women's  nature  and  edu- 
cation, if  we  allow  for  certain  modifications  of  custom, 
are  also  almost  identical.  The  sentence  in  which 
Folliott  solves  the  question  whether  ladies  shall  be  ex- 
cluded from  his  resuscitated  Athenian  theatre  among 
the  number  of  citizens  disgraced  by  their  ignorance  of 
Greek,  for  style  and  sentiment  is  worthy  of  Dr. 
Middleton  himself:"  Every  man  may  take  in  a  lady,  and 
she  who  can  construe  and  metricise  a  chorus,  shall,  if  she 
so  please,  pass  in  by  herself."  But  though  the  men  and 
manners  of  Patterne  have  lost  in  robustness,  compared 
with  those  of  Crotchet,  they  have  developed  in  other 
directions,  and  on  Meredith's  theory  that  women  are 
what  their  menkind  make  of  them,  the  substitution  of 
Mrs.  Mountstuart,  and  Laetitia,  and  Clara,  for  Mrs. 
Folliott,  Miss  Crotchet,  and  Miss  Clarinda,  is  no  mean 
testimony  to  growing  masculine  enlightenment.  More- 
over, Dr.  Middleton  is  best  and  most  convincing  where 
the  issues  under  consideration  are  subtlest.    The  incident 


THE   EGOIST  169 

of  "An  Aged  and  a  Great  Wine  "  is  delightful  farce,  but 
it  does  not  compete  in  characterisation  with  the  Doctor's 
criticism  of  Willoughby's  snappishness  to  De  Craye  on 
their  way  to  the  party  at  Mrs.  Mountstuart's,  or  his 
dialogue  with  the  ladies  Eleanor  and  Isabel,  and 
Laetitia's  father.  It  is  on  a  lower  plane  too  than  his 
delicacy  in  relation  to  Vernon  and  their  most  excellent 
fooling,  "  In  Assignation's  name  he  assignats."  Sym- 
pathising as  he  probably  would  with  Folliott's  manner 
of  correcting  Eavesdrops  un mannerliness,  Dr.  Mid- 
dleton,  nevertheless,  relegates  such  rough  and  ready 
methods  to  the  service  of  Crossjay  and  his  comrades, 
and  excels  in  the  subtler  means  of  rebuke  he  commands 
for  his  peers. 

Horace  De  Craye  is  the  most  delightful  of  Meredith's 
Irishmen.  As  soon  as  his  baggage  comes  in  sight,  a 
breeze  begins  to  stir  the  rarefied  atmosphere  at  Pat- 
terne,  and  the  promise  of  refreshment  is  not  belied  on 
his  arrival.  Accident  has  favoured  him  with  an  intro- 
duction to  Clara,  and  she  has  already  acknowledged  his 
charm;  for  their  acquaintance  has  quickened  to  intimacy 
within  the  space  of  an  hour,  and  Laetitia  Dale  has  been 
scandalised  by  the  changed  aspect  of  one  who,  so 
shortly  before,  appeared  to  be  overwhelmed  with 
despair.  "  Clara  bathed  in  mirth :  a  boy  in  a  summer 
stream  shows  not  heartier  refreshment  of  his  whole 
being."  She  is  quickly  to  realise  that  De  Craye  is  not 
the  sustaining  strong  man  of  her  dreams,  ideal  for 
anchorage — that  he  is,  in  fact,  but  "a  holiday  character." 
But,  out-wearied  as  she  is  by  iterations  of  deaf  mis- 
understanding, she  is  ready  to  estimate  highly  a  gift 
for  responsiveness  and  accordant  chiming  :  over-highly, 
perhaps ;  yet  there  is  a  delicacy  and  elasticity  in  De 
Craye's  sympathy  with  her  changes  of  mood  not  easy 
to  over-estimate.     His  instinctive  actions  for  sparing 


170  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

her  pain  are  almost  invariably  right.  He  can  under- 
stand and  appreciate  her  directness  in  formulating  the 
nature  of  her  influence  over  Crossjay,  and  realise  that 
her  accent  on  the  word  "  marriage,"  within  a  few  weeks 
of  her  own,  betokens  some  more  abstract  desire  than 
an  exchange  of  lovers.  And  all  this  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  he  professes  small  faith  in  disinterestedness. 
His  gay  tactfulness  is  delightful  in  contrast  with 
Willoughby's  stiffness,  and  also  to  some  extent  in 
relation  with  Vernon  Whitford's  seriousness.  For, 
though  there  can  be  no  question  that  in  Whitford,  and 
Redworth,  and  Weyburn,  Meredith  draws  his  ideal  type, 
he  keeps  a  warm  place  in  his  heart  for  worldlings 
wanting  in  the  rectitude  and  steadfastness  of  his  heroes, 
if  only  they  possess  a  keen  sense  of  fitness  and  social 
obligation  in  matters  of  detail.  They  may  not  be  of  the 
Kingdom  exactly,  but  they  are  secured,  at  any  rate, 
from  his  Outer  Darkness  by  the  fact  that  their  intelli- 
gence is  habitually  playing  and  responding  over  an  area 
of  feelings  and  interests  unrelated  to  their  own.  They 
may  not  be  great ;  but  the  windows  of  what  souls  they 
possess  stand  open  to  life  and  its  lessons. 

Clara  is  without  Meredith's  prime  virtue  of  courage  ; 
she  wavers  and  vacillates  till  what  is  little  more  than 
a  fortunate  accident  puts  her  on  to  the  right  track. 
She  belongs  to  Cecilia's  family ;  but  she  is  capable 
of  robuster  growth — not  so  much  of  developing  strength 
of  her  own,  as  of  learning  to  recognise  her  weakness 
and  desire  its  corrective.  She  longs  to  be  rescued  from 
Willoughby  ;  yet  she  is  not  represented  as  accepting  the 
"  spiritual  lift  out  of  circumstances  "  his  first  rival  offers 
her.  We  are  given  to  understand  that  her  allegiance  to 
Vernon  comes  of  her  recognition  that  she  is  at  fault  in 
character  as  well  as  circumstance,  and  that  his  guidance 
and  control  are  her  true  means  of  development.     She 


THE   EGOIST  171 

achieves  the  self-knowledge  and  humility  which  for 
Meredith  are  the  groundwork  of  aspiration  ;  and  her 
misdemeanours  are  pardoned.  Certainly  no  member 
of  the  opposite  sex  would  have  been  granted  quite  so 
ready  an  escape.  The  reader's  attention  would  have 
been  called  to  the  fact  that  flight  from  one  form  of  de- 
pendence to  another  is  but  postponement  of  conflict.  We 
light  here  on  an  inconsistency  in  our  author,  at  which 
we  may  be  pardoned  for  smiling.  In  relation  to  women, 
Meredith's  chivalry  is  allowed  to  override  the  relent- 
lessness  of  his  logic.  Women,  he  says,  are  the  creations 
of  men  ;  they  are  hardly  accountable  for  weakness  and 
cowardice  induced  by  their  master's  demands.  The 
marvel  is  that  they  show  any  spirit  at  all.  Vacillating 
desires  for  freedom  and  righteousness  are  the  most 
a  fair-minded  masculine  critic  finds  himself  able  to 
demand  of  them,  and  these  are  sufficient ;  for  they  are 
an  earnest  of  that  which  one  day  is  to  be.  Clara,  in  her 
resistance  of  Willoughby  and  De  Craye,  and  her  ap- 
preciation of  Vernon,  has  shown  some  courage  and 
considerable  insight.  She  has  shown  all  that  can  be 
expected  of  her,  and  her  creator  forbears  to  read  his 
severer  homiletic.  He  gives  her  into  the  hands  of  a 
man  who  possesses  the  perception  and  sympathy  that 
she  needs,  and  will  not  dream  of  sentimental  question- 
ings as  to  the  superior  weight  of  his  judgments  and 
finality  of  his  decisions. 


CHAPTER   XIII 
THE   TRAGIC   COMEDIANS 

THE  difficulty  of  deciding  as  to  the  relative  merits 
of  Meredith's  novels  is  largely  due  to  the  extra- 
ordinarily wide  range  of  his  sympathies,  and  to  the  fact 
that  he  seldom  explores  the  same  region  twice  over. 
Many,  perhaps  most,  of  his  stories  have  a  foundation 
in  actual  events,  though  these  events  are  adapted  to 
purposes  of  his  own.  In  The  Tragic  Comedians^  he 
has  taken  a  theme,  the  incidents  of  which  are  them- 
selves so  notorious  that  he  is  confined  to  "  the  bare 
railway  line  of  the  story."  The  story  is  that  of  Ferdi- 
nand Lassalle  and  Helene  von  Donniges ;  nothing, 
Meredith  says,  has  been  added  to  it,  nothing  invented. 
Nor  does  this  literalness  apply  merely  to  the  incidents  ; 
an  account  of  the  episode  written  in  after  life  by  the 
heroine  of  it2  is  the  source  of  most  of  the  dialogue. 
The  title  of  the  book,  The  Tragic  Comedians,  might  in 
itself  provide  subject-matter  for  an  essay.  The  char- 
acters of  few  men,  says  Meredith,  are  of  "  a  stature  and 
a  complexity  calling  for  the  junction  of  the  two  Muses  to 
name  them";  the  character  of  Ferdinand  Lasalle,  known 
in  the  story  as  Sigismund  Alvan,  is  of  this  stature. 
Yet,  in  one  direction,  his  acts  are  "  lividly  ludicrous," 
and  he  meets  a  lurid  end.  He  is  of  the  tragic  come- 
dians, those    men    whose    histories    reveal    some   huge 

1  Published  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,   October,   1 880,  to  February, 
1881. 

2  Meine  Beziehungen  zu  Ferdinand  Lasalle,  by  Frau  von  Racowitza. 

172 


THE   TRAGIC   COMEDIANS  173 

discrepancy  between  their  powers  and  their  fortunes — 
the  which,  if  it  be  not  interrogated,  "  to  distinguish 
where  character  strikes  the  note  of  discord  with  life," 
will  make  Nature  appear  a  harridan  and  man  the  play- 
thing of  circumstance.  The  prologue — one  of  Meredith's 
most  brilliant  bits  of  writing — opens  with  a  discussion 
of  the  much-abused  word  "  fantastical,"  and  a  declara- 
tion of  its  fitness  to  "  that  wandering  ship  of  the 
drunken  pilot,  the  mutinous  crew,  and  the  angry  captain, 
called  Human  Nature."  Alvan  and  his  lady  "  will  pass 
under  this  word  as  under  their  banner  and  motto. 
Their  acts  are  incredible ;  they  .  .  .  drove  their  bark 
in  a  manner  to  eclipse  historical  couples  upon  our 
planet.  .  .  .  The  last  chapter  of  them  is  written  in  red 
blood,  and  the  man  pouring  out  that  last  chapter  was 
of  a  mighty  nature,  not  unheroical,  a  man  of  the  active, 
grappling,  modern  brain,  which  wrestles  with  facts  to 
keep  the  world  alive,  and  can  create  them  to  set  it 
spinning.  A  Faust-like  legend  might  spring  from  him  ; 
he  had  a  devil.  He  was  the  leader  of  a  host,  the  hope 
of  a  party,  venerated  by  his  followers,  well  hated  by 
his  enemies,  respected  by  the  intellectual  chiefs  of  his 
time,  in  the  pride  of  his  manhood  and  his  labours  when 
he  fell.  And  why  this  man  should  have  come  to  his 
end  through  love,  and  the  woman  who  loved  him  have 
laid  her  hand  in  the  hand  of  the  slayer,  is  the  problem 
we  have  to  study,  nothing  inventing,  in  the  spirit  and 
flesh  of  both." 

Clotilde  von  Riidiger  (Helene  von  Donniges)  is  a 
member  of  the  smaller  German  aristocracy,  by  which 
Sigismund  Alvan  is  abhorred  as  a  demagogue  and  a 
Jew.  But  the  period  (1862-4)  is  "revolutionary  in 
society  by  reflection  of  the  state  of  politics,"  and 
Clotilde  is  renowned  as  the  most  original  of  her  set. 
Young  as  she  is,  her  reputation  for  brilliancy  is  great  in 


174  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

all  the  circles  she  touches,  whether  in  Germany,  Italy, 
or  the  French  Riviera.  But  her  flights  of  daring  are 
almost  wholly  confined  to  intellectual  regions,  and  her 
family — consisting  of  father,  a  gouty  general ;  mother,  a 
faded  beauty ;  and  negligible  sisters — willingly  minis- 
ters to  her  self-esteem.  Her  reading,  Meredith  tells  us,  is 
"  an  interfusion  of  philosophy  skimmed,  and  realistic 
romances  deep-sounded,"  but  she  belongs  to  a  country 
where  literature  is  seriously  esteemed  and  widely  appre- 
ciated, where  there  is  a  real  traffic  in  ideas.  Her  talk 
of  Plutarch  and  "  Pompeius "  with  her  partner  at  the 
ball  in  Berlin  is  perfectly  genuine,  though  it  would  be 
difficult  to  imagine  an  Englishwoman  indulging  in  it. 
And  this  fact  of  her  intellectual  attainment  needs  to  be 
borne  strenuously  in  mind,  because,  except  in  the 
scenes  where  he  shows  her  with  Alvan,  Meredith  is 
guilty  of  a  prejudice  in  his  treatment  of  Clotilde,  an 
over-analysis  of  motive,  which  almost  obscures  her 
positive  qualities.  It  is,  of  course,  part  of  his  purpose 
to  show  her  strong  in  Alvan's  presence,  weak  when  she 
is  alone  ;  and  history  is  with  him  here.  But  there  is  the 
further  fact  to  be  reckoned  with  that,  long  before  they 
have  met,  Alvan  hears  of  her  as  his  match,  and  after 
wards,  in  spite  of  the  clearest  vision  of  her  failings, 
feels  her  consistently  a  prize  worth  winning.  Meredith's 
attitude  to  Clotilde  is  the  reverse  of  his  ordinary  atti- 
tude to  women,  the  magnanimous  attitude  just  spoken 
of  in  reference  to  Clara,  and  in  reference  to  Diana  still 
more  marked.  Clotilde  has  far  more  forcible  opposition 
to  contend  with,  yet  little  or  nothing  is  allowed  to  her 
fears  ;  she  is  labelled  a  craven  at  almost  her  first  signs 
of  instability.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  Meredith 
is  in  love  with  Alvan  exactly  as  he  is  in  love  with  Diana. 
He  sees  in  them  both,  or  attributes  to  them,  a  power  of 
passion  that  raises  them  high  above  their  fellows,  and 


THE   TRAGIC   COMEDIANS  175 

he  scorns  those  who,  having  been  in  presence  of  this 
power,  fail  to  cling  to  it  as  divine.  Diana's  lover  is 
required  to  recognise  it  as  covering  an  offence  against 
the  deepest  mutual  interest  of  their  lives ;  Alvan's 
girlish  bride-elect,  fortified  by  her  memory  of  it,  must 
turn  from  bewilderment  at  the  inconsistency  of  her 
lover's  actions,  and  immediately  develop  a  power  he 
knows  her  not  to  possess,  by  which  to  surmount  the 
brutal  opposition  of  her  parents.  Is  not  this,  combined 
with  their  author's  continued  insistence  on  the  relative 
inferiority  of  Dacier  and  Clotilde,  something  very  like 
special  pleading  ?  No  one  could  lay  more  emphasis  than 
Meredith  has  elsewhere  laid  on  the  fact  that  it  is  the 
task  of  love  worthy  the  name  to  translate  itself  into 
considerate  and  imaginative  action ;  moreover,  he  has 
written  a  poem  entitled  The  Burden  of  Strength.  In 
The  Egoist  and  in  Diana  of  the  Crossways,  Meredith 
is  in  love  with  his  heroines  and  despises  their  lovers ; 
here  he  is  in  love  with  Alvan  and  Alvan  alone,  and  his 
antagonism  to  Clotilde  has  been  increased  by  her 
attempt  at  self-justification.  The  characters  are  of 
course  historical,  and  it  is  not  intended  to  suggest 
there  can  be  any  doubt  which  was  the  greater  of 
nature  ;  yet  Meredith's  tribute  to  Lasalle  would  have 
been  higher,  if  he  had  abstained  from  pressing  the 
points  so  severely  against  the  woman  of  his  choice. 
We  may  remark  that,  although  Helene's  conduct  is  not 
justified  either  by  her  own  or  any  other  version  of  the 
story,  these  agree  in  laying  more  stress  than  Meredith 
does  on  Lasalle's  earlier  relations  with  women,  on  the 
treachery  of  his  friends,  and  on  the  degree  of  Helene's 
physical  collapse  under  her  father's  brutality.1 

1  There  are  numerous  German  authorities  on  the  subject,  but  a  fair 
summary  of  the  case  is  given  in  English  in  Ferdinand  Lasalle  and  Helene 
von  Donniges  ;  A  Modern  Tragedy,  by  Elizabeth  E.  Evans. 


176  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Except,  however,  for  the  interests  of  historical 
justice,  what  Meredith  has  left  undone  in  The  Tragic 
Comedians  is  not  of  much  moment  ;  what  he  has  done 
is  so  great.  It  is  among  the  best  of  his  novels  ;  the 
theme  calls  for  that  poetic  treatment  in  which  he  is 
most  himself.  The  characters  and  incidents  ready  to 
his  hand  were  vivid ;  his  task  was  to  provide  the 
atmosphere  in  which  they  moved.  And  in  this  he  has 
succeeded  to  perfection  in  his  drawing  of  Alvan ; 
"  Behind  the  veil  of  our  human  conventions,"  says  Alvan 
to  Clotilde,  "  power  is  constant  as  ever,  and  to  perceive 
the  fact  is  to  have  the  divining-rod — to  walk  clear  of 
shams.  ...  It  is  the  soul  that  does  things  in  this  life, 
the  rest  is  vapour  " ;  and  Meredith  has  made  us  realise 
him  as  one  whose  grasp  on  life  and  reality  compelled 
submission.  Of  his  place  in  European  politics  little  is 
said.  But  the  facts  are  part  of  his  background,  only 
subdued,  that  the  man  himself  may  be  seen  greater  than 
anything  he  has  done.  He  appears  first  in  the  fourth 
chapter  of  the  book,  a  scene  which  sets  the  pace  for  the 
whole  story,  and  it  is  the  pace  that  kills.  Alvan  and 
Clotilde  have  been  matter  of  surmise  to  one  another 
for  a  year  ;  at  last  they  are  in  the  same  room,  in  Berlin. 
Clotilde  introduces  herself  with  a  contradiction  as  to 
the  character  of  Hamlet,  elsewhere  quoted.  Alvan 
shakes  off  his  masculine  companions  as  other  men 
might  shake  off  a  fly.  In  the  midst  of  a  crowd  they 
are  alone.  " '  Hamlet  in  due  season,' "  said  he.  .  .  .  '  I 
shall  convince  you.'  She  shook  her  head.  '  Yes,  yes  ; 
an  opinion  formed  by  a  woman  is  inflexible  ;  I  know 
that  :  the  fact  is  not  half  so  stubborn.  But  at  present 
there  are  two  more  important  actors  ;  we  are  not  at  Elsi- 
nore.  You  are  aware  that  I  hoped  to  meet  you  ?'  'Is 
there  a  periodical  advertisement  of  your  hopes? — or  do 
they  come   by   intuition  ? '     '  Kollin    was    right  !     The 


THE   TRAGIC   COMEDIANS  177 

ways  of  the   serpent  will    be  serpentine.     I   knew  we 
must  meet.     It  is  no  true  day  so  long  as  the  goddess  of 
the  morning    and    the   sun-god    are  kept  asunder.     I 
speak  of  myself,  by  what  I  have  felt  since  I  heard  of 
you.'     '  You  are  sure  of  your  divinity  ?  '     '  Through  my 
belief  in  yours  ! '     They  bowed  smiling  at  the  courtly 
exchanges.     'And    tell    me,'    said   he,  'as  to   meeting 
me  ?  .  .  .'    She  replied  :  '  When  we  are  so  like  the  rest 
of  the  world,  we  may  confess  our  weakness.'     '  Unlike  ! 
for   the   world    and   I    meet   and    part :    not   we   two.' 
Clotilde  attempted  an  answer  :  it  would  not  come.    She 
tried   to  be  revolted  by  his  lording  tone,  and  found  it 
strangely  inoffensive.     His  lording   presence   and   the 
smile  that  was  like  a  waving  feather  on  it  compelled  her 
so  strongly  to  submit  to  hear,  as  to  put  her  in  danger 
of  appearing  to  embrace  this   man's  rapid  advances. 
She  said  :  '  I  first  heard  of  you  at  Capri.     And  I  was 
at  Capri  seven  days  after  you  had  left.'    '  You  knew  my 
name  then  ?'     'Be  not  too  curious  with  necromancers. 
Here  is  the  date,  March  15th.     You  departed  on  the 
8th.'    '  I  think  I  did.    That  is  a  year  from  now.'    '  Then 
we  missed  :  now  we  meet.     It  is  a  year  lost.     A  year  is 
a  great  age  !     Reflect  on  it  and  what  you  owe  me.    How 
I  wished  for  a  comrade  at  Capri !     Not  a  "  young  lady," 
and  certainly  no  man.     The  understanding  Feminine 
was   my  desire — a  different  thing    from  the   feminine 
understanding,  usually.     I  wanted  my  comrade  young 
and  fair,  necessarily  of  your  sex,  but  with  heart  and 
brain  ;  an  insane  request  I  fancied,  until  I  heard  that 
you  were  the  person   I  wanted.     In  default  of  you  I 
paraded  the  island  with  Tiberius,  who  is  my  favourite 
tyrant.'  "     He  describes  the  passages  between  him  and 
Tiberius,  who,  at  his  suggestion,  attacks  the  patricians, 
while  a  plebeian  demagogue  chronicles  the  struggle  in 
which  he,  Alvan,  is  destined   to  fall.     Clotilde  enters 

N 


178  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

into  the  extravagance  and  comments,  "  You  died 
bravely?"  He  replies  that  bodily  death  by  that  sap- 
phire sea  and  under  that  sapphire  sky  was  easier  to 
meet  than  the  second  death  of  missing,  by  so  few  days, 
a  gold-haired  Lucretia.  He  questions  her  abruptly  : 
"  Tell  me  frankly — the  music  in  Italy  ? "  "  Amorous 
and  martial,  brainless  and  monotonous."  "  Excellent ! " 
his  eyes  flashed  delightedly,  "  O  comrade  of  comrades ! 
that  year  lost  to  me  will  count  heavily  as  I  learn  to 
value  those  I  have  gained.  Yes,  brainless !  There, 
in  music,  we  beat  them,  as  politically  France  beats 
us.  No  life  without  brain  !  The  brainless  in  Art 
and  in  Statecraft  are  nothing  but  a  little  more  ob- 
structive than  the  dead.  It  is  less  easy  to  cut  a 
way  through  them.  But  it  must  be  done,  or  the 
Philistine  will  be  as  the  locust  in  his  increase,  and 
devour  the  green  blades  of  the  earth.  You  have 
been  trained  to  shudder  at  the  demagogue  ?  '  I  do 
not  shudder,'  said  Clotilde." 

Much  of  the  skill  of  the  scene  lies  in  its  interthread- 
ing  of  the  near  and  the  far,  its  mingling  of  abstract  and 
personal.  The  "  you  and  I  "  of  ordinary  lovers  would 
have  been  ludicrously  inadequate  here ;  yet  an  over- 
weight of  intellect  would  have  injured  the  effect  of 
intensity,  which  is  the  keynote  of  the  whole.  Alvan, 
pouring  forth  his  thoughts,  checks  himself  at  the  close  of 
one  of  his  outbursts  with  the  remark  :  " '  You  leave  it  to 
me  to  talk.'  '  Could  I  do  better  ? '  '  You  listen  sweetly.' 
1  It  is  because  I  like  to  hear.'  '  You  have  the  pearly  little 
ear  of  a  shell  on  the  sand.'  '  With  the  great  sea  sounding 
near  it.' "  Alvan  drew  closer  to  her.  " '  I  look  into  your 
eyes  and  perceive  that  one  may  listen  to  you  and  speak 
to  you.  Heart  to  heart,  then  !  Yes,  a  sea  to  lull  you, 
a  sea  to  win  you — temperately,  let  us  hope  ;  by  storm,  if 
need    be.      My    prize    is    found!'"      The    giant,   who 


THE   TRAGIC   COMEDIANS  179 

heretofore  has  conquered  all  hearts,  his  own  untouched, 
trembles  in  the  hands  of  this  girl — his  "  golden-crested 
serpent,"  his  "  red  fox,"  his  "  shining-haired  Lucretia." 
Their  skimming  discussions  are  "  like  swallow-flights 
from  the  nest  beneath  the  eaves  to  the  surface  of  the 
stream."  Their  talk  is  of  Heine,  with  whom  Alvan 
has  lived ;  of  politics,  of  Paris,  of  Italy,  of  wine,  and  of 
Shakespeare ;  and  last,  but  not  least,  of  Alvan  himself. 
He  vivifies  all  that  he  touches.  "  There  was  a  bell 
in  everything  for  him  ;  Nature  gave  out  her  cry  and 
significance  was  on  all  sides  of  the  universe.  .  .  .  Where 
Clotilde  had  really  thought,  instead  of  flippantly  tap- 
ping at  the  doors  of  thought,  or  crying  vagrantly  for  an 
echo,  his  firm  footing  in  the  region  thrilled  her ;  and 
where  she  had  felt  deeper  than  fancifully,  his  wise 
tenderness  overwhelmed." 

The  surrounding  guests  realise  that  the  love  god 
is  at  work  among  them — a  presence  irresistible.  Alvan's 
love  affairs  are  caught  up  to  the  plane  of  his  politics. 
His  love  is  volcanic,  and  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars 
are  pressed  into  its  service.  The  hours  race  onward 
to  the  morning :  Alvan  will  conduct  Clotilde  to  her 
home.  "  He  laughed  to  hear  her  say,  in  answer  to 
a  question  as  to  her  present  feelings  :  '  I  feel  that  I 
am  carried  away  by  a  centaur ! '  The  comparison 
had  been  used  to  him  before."  Their  eclipse  is  afar, 
but  it  is  as  if  a  shadow  crept  to  the  edge  of  their 
sun.  "'  No,'  said  he,  responding  to  a  host  of  memories 
to  shake  them  off,  '  no  more  of  the  quadruped  man  ! ' 
You  tempt  him,  may  I  tell  you  that  ?  Why  now,  this 
moment,  at  the  snap  of  my  fingers,  what  is  to  hinder 
our  taking  the  short  cut  to  happiness,  centaur  and 
nymph?  One  leap  and  a  gallop,  and  we  should  be  into 
the  morning,  leaving  night  to  grope  for  us,  parents  and 
friends  to  run  about  for  the  wits  they  lose  in  running. 


180  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

But  no !  no  more  scandals.     That  silver  moon  invites 
us  by  its  very  spell  of  bright  serenity  to  be  mad  ;  just 
as  when  you  drink  of  a  reverie,  the  more  prolonged  it 
is,  the  greater  the  readiness  for  wild  delirium  at  the  end 
of  the   draught.     But   no ! '  his  voice  deepened—'  the 
handsome  face  of  the  orb  that  lights  us  would  be  well 
enough  were  it  only  a  gallop  between  us  two.     Dearest, 
the  orb  that  lights  us  two  for  a  lifetime  must  be  taken  all 
round,  and  I  have  been  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  moon  : 
I  have  seen  the  other  face  of  it — a  visage  scored  with 
regrets,  dead  dreams,  burnt  passions,  bald  illusions,  and 
the  like,  the  like  ! — sunless,  waterless,  without  a  flower ! 
It  is  the  old  volcano  land  :  it  grows  one  bitter  herb  :  if 
ever  you  see  my  mouth  distorted,  you  will  know  I  am 
revolving  a  taste  of  it ;  and  as  I  need  the  antidote  you 
give,  I  will  not  be  the  centaur  to  win  you,  for  that  is  the 
land  where  he  stables  himself ;  yes,  there  he  ends  his 
course,  and  that  is  the  herb  he  finishes  by  pasturing  on.'  " 
No  determination  could,  we  feel,  be  wiser  or  more  finely 
expressed,  yet  it  brings  us  in  sight  of  the  rock  on  which 
these  two  are  to  founder.     Alvan,  irresistible  while  he 
holds  straight  on  his  course,  sacrifices  his  single-minded- 
ness  in  the  desire  to  win  social  advantages  over  and 
above  his  bride.   Accredited  good  citizenship  becomes  his 
ambition  for  the  first  time  in  his  life.     He  is  deeply  in  love 
with  Clotilde ;  but  he  desires  increasingly  to  have,  with 
her,  a  wife  and  a  marriage  unexceptionable  in  the  eyes  of 
the  world.    In  the  effort  to  compass  his  desire  he  comes 
to  his  death,  and  the  world  mourns  at  his  tomb.     He  is 
killed  in  a  duel,  and  much  of  the  fault,  Meredith  would 
say  most  of  it,  is  Clotilde's.     Yet  so  godlike  a  figure 
is  he,  that  to  have  been  claimed  for  his  mate  makes 
her    immortal.      And,    after    all,   we    may   consent   to 
let  "  the  woman,"  "  poor  Clotilde,"  serve  as  his  scape- 
goat ;    for    has     not     Meredith    himself,    in     another 


THE   TRAGIC   COMEDIANS  181 

context,  detected  and  exposed  identically  the  same 
error  as  Alvan's,  where  of  Beauchamp  with  Renee 
he  says :  "  He  committed  the  capital  fault  of  treating 
her  as  his  equal  in  passion  and  courage,  not  as  metal 
ready  to  run  into  the  mould  under  temporary  stress 
of  fire"? 


CHAPTER   XIV 
THE   POEMS— "THE  JOY   OF   EARTH" 

WE  usually  conceive  of  poetry  as  a  power  whose 
essential  function  is  to  release  the  mind  from 
the  tyranny  of  fact  and  transport  it  into  a  new  world, 
in  which,  earth-bound  no  longer,  it  rises  freely  on  the 
wings  of  aspiration,  and  finds,  in  dream,  a  haven  of 
forgetfulness  far  from  the  harsh  realities  of  the  waking 
world.  According  to  this  conception,  part  of  the  value 
of  poetry  is  that  it  creates  a  dissatisfaction  with  com- 
mon life ;  it  is  the  revelation  of  the  things  that  are  not, 
those  things  for  which  the  Soul  searches  in  vain  this 
narrow  prison-house  of  mortality,  where  is  no  place  for 
the  happiness  for  which  she  longs  : 

Ah  Love  !  could  you  and  I  with  Him  conspire 
To  grasp  this  sorry  scheme  of  things  entire, 
Would  we  not  shatter  it  to  bits,  and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire  ? 

The  idea  is  noble  ;  and  it  is  true  that  not  a  little  of 
the  greatest  poetry  derives  its  power  from  a  refusal  to 
accept  the  established  order  with  mean  complacency 
merely  because  it  is  established,  from  a  determination 
to  assert  the  soul's  highest  claims  whether  there  be  any- 
thing in  the  world  to  answer  them  or  no, — a  defiance  of 
all  mechanical  limitation,  a  sublime  assertion  of  the  in- 
exhaustible self-sufficiency  of  spiritual  riches.  It  is  a 
noble  conception,  but  a  conception  fraught  with  danger. 

182 


THE  POEMS— "THE  JOY  OF  EARTH"    183 

For  however  poor,  however  unsatisfying-,  a  thing  life  in 
its  common  conditions  may  appear  to  be,  it  is  with 
these  conditions  that  all  men  for  all  time  are  primarily 
concerned.  And  to  revolt  against  them,  to  turn  the 
mind  away  from  them  to  a  supposed  more  perfect 
world  of  its  own  devising,  serves  only  to  bring  out  in 
them  more  clearly  the  qualities  against  which  revolt  is 
made,  and  to  increase,  by  contrast,  the  illusion  of  their 
barrenness.  In  other  words,  the  very  essence  and  spirit 
of  poetry — its  passionately  exalted  temper — tend  to 
give  it  a  disintegrating,  one  might  almost  say  a  de- 
moralising, influence.  For  it  divides  experience  into 
two  halves  and,  by  the  very  fact  of  the  division,  intro- 
duces an  element  of  unreality  into  both.  Aspiration 
is  indeed  an  infinite  thing,  and  the  goal  of  desire  is 
never  reached  ;  but  in  much  high  poetry,  this  infinitude, 
this  insatiability  of  the  soul  (being  made,  as  it  were,  a 
focus  for  thought,  instead  of  an  assumption),  is  so  treated 
as  to  appear  for  what  it  is  not,  namely  as  a  reaching 
out  after  things  whose  very  nature  is  to  be  unreachable, 
a  concentration  of  desire  not  upon  an  end  conceived  as 
constantly  developing,  but  upon  endlessness  itself: — 

The  Desire  of  the  Moth  for  the  Star. 

Much  high  poetry  is  certainly  involved  in  this  error, 
an  error  arising  from  a  fallacy  in  transcendental  think- 
ing, very  plain  when  pointed  out.  But  there  is  a  still 
greater  bulk  of  poetry  which,  not  based  itself  upon  so 
insecure  a  foundation,  yet  tends  to  set  up  in  the  mind 
of  all  but  the  most  philosophic  readers  an  error  at  least 
analogous  ;  the  man  who  views  life  poetically  is  for 
them  the  man  who  ignores  what  are  for  the  mass  of 
his  fellows  the  only  recognisable  facts  of  life,  and 
devotes  all  his  attention  to  certain  shadowy  appear- 
ances, seldom  apparent  to  any  but  himself,  and  in  any 


1 84  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

case,  when  detached,  as  he  is  wont  to  detach  them,  from 
the  solid  fabric  of  life  itself,  insignificant  and  unreal. 
Poetry  comes  in  this  way  to  be  supposed  too  tender, 
too  fragile,  a  thing  to  bear  the  rough  and  tumble  of  a 
working  world,  in  which  men  speak  with  firmness  and 
with  candour,  meaning  what  they  say.  There  is  the 
tendency  to  treat  it,  much  as  men  treat  women,  as  if  it 
were  something  too  delicate  to  breathe  the  air  of  truth, 
in  whose  presence  the  mind  deferentially  draws  down 
a  protective  veil  against  the  inroad  of  reality  and  pre- 
pares to  be  amused  and  edified  by  exquisite  impossi- 
bilities. This  is  an  insolent  attitude,  fatal  to  the 
dignity  of  both  parties  concerned  in  it.  Far  worthier 
is  the  action  of  those,  who,  believing  that  they  can 
trace  in  poetry  the  attempt  to  set  up  a  fraudulent 
relation,  to  baffle  and  to  subdue  the  intellect,  treat  it 
as  an  altogether  negligible  part  of  life.  They  dignify 
it — with  the  candour  of  their  contempt ;  they  show 
that  at  least  they  expected  from  it  a  genuine  and  manly 
utterance,  and,  finding  themselves  disappointed,  will 
take  for  substitute  no  sop,  however  sweet. 

Naturally  a  great  poet — a  man  in  whom  the  spirit  of 
poetry  is  predominant — cannot  be  expected  to  take 
cognisance  of  misapprehension  or  misinterpretation  of 
either  kind.  His  vision  is  not  a  matter  that  he  is  the 
least  interested  to  defend  or  to  discuss.  He  has  an 
inward  conviction  of  truth  as  it  is  revealed  to  him,  and 
is  concerned  with  nothing  but  its  expression.  But  one 
who  is  only  secondarily  a  poet,  primarily  a  moralist 
and  a  thinker,  but  who,  as  a  thinker,  recognises  that  to 
misconceive  of  poetry  or  banish  it  from  the  mind  is  to 
cripple  thought  itself  and  take  from  life  its  noblest 
medium  of  expression,  such  an  one,  even  in  his  poetical 
work,  will  keep  the  continuity  of  life  with  poetry  per- 
petually in  view.     He  will  be  strenuously  alert  against 


THE  POEMS— "THE  JOY  OF  EARTH"  185 

offering  the  least  temptation  to  any  reader  to  treat  the 
enjoyment  of  poetry  as  a  mere  indulgence  of  the  mind. 
He  will  wish  to  show  that  poetry  is  poetry  not  by  virtue 
of  vagueness  or  as  a  thing  removed,  fostering  or  minis- 
tering to  emotions  to  which  life  makes  no  response,  but 
because,  with  an  accuracy  as  perfect  for  its  purpose  as 
that  of  science  itself,  it  looks  upon  the  whole  of  life  and 
sees  its  various  parts  in  true  proportion. 

Though  a  rich  vein  of  poetic  imagery  appears  in 
everything  he  writes,  Meredith  cannot  be  called  pri- 
marily a  poet ;  for  through  almost  all  his  poetic  work 
there  runs  a  purpose,  to  the  writer's  apprehension  more 
vital  than  the  perfection  of  the  work  itself.  This  work, 
he  would  say,  taken  as  pure  poetry,  may  or  may  not  be 
unimpeachable  ;  but  there  is  one  impeachment  which  it 
shall  never  have  to  bear.  No  one  shall  say  of  it  that  it 
denies  the  facts  of  life  or  exists  merely  as  a  misty  phan- 
tom afloat  upon  the  breeze ;  its  foundations  at  least 
shall  be  secure,  it  shall  be  rooted  in  the  solid  ground. 
Thence  rising,  if  but  fitfully,  into  the  upper  air,  it  shall 
exercise,  not  a  disintegrating,  but  a  reconciling  influence 
upon  life  and  thought ;  it  shall  give  beauty  and  fruitful- 
ness  to  what  at  first  seemed  common,  by  showing  it  an 
essential  part  of  a  larger  plan,  a  wider  unity,  in  which 
each  element  is  necessary  to  all  the  rest  and  the  dis- 
tinction between  low  and  high  vanishes  and  is  forgotten. 
For  the  worth  and  dignity  of  the  so-called  higher  mem- 
bers belongs  to  them,  not  in  their  own  right,  but  as  the 
outcome  of  a  true  relation  to  the  so-called  lower  mem- 
bers, both  lower  and  higher  being  equally  in  their 
degree  the  expression  of  the  principle  or  spirit  of 
life  that  pervades  the  whole.  And  poetry,  the  recog- 
nition of  that  pervading  principle,  the  expression 
of  the  spirit  animating  high  and  low  alike,  far  from 
denying    fact,    shall    be    shown    the    only    means    by 


1 86  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

which  the  ultimate  and   eternal   fact   can    find    state- 
ment at  all. 

This  continuity,  this  immanence  of  the  spirit  in  every 
part,  is  indeed  the  main  theme  of  all  Meredith's  poetry. 
According  to  his  conception,  poetry  consists,  not  in  the 
creation  of  a  new  world,  but  in  the  recognition  of  the 
true  nature  of  the  world  that  is,  seen  from  the  most 
comprehensive,  the  most  exalted  standpoint.  In  every 
piece  the  same  attitude  is  taken  up,  and,  in  many,  forms 
the  main  part  of  the  poetic  material.  And  to  those 
familiar  with  his  writing  he  sums  the  whole  in  a  single 
word — a  word  which  he  chooses  because  of  its  utter 
familiarity,  because  in  common  life  it  stands  for  the  tan- 
gible, the  prosaic,  the  commonplace,  but  into  which  he 
infuses  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  his  knowledge, 
and  takes  for  the  only  limit  of  a  limitless  aspiration — 
the  word  "  Earth."  To  understand  this  word  as  Meredith 
understands  it  is  to  possess  a  key  to  the  most  secret 
chambers  of  his  mind ;  to  think  of  Earth  and  feel  towards 
Earth  as  he  does  is  to  be  heir  to  the  new  inheritance 
conferred  by  his  poetry  upon  human  life  and  thought. 

Not  solitarily  in  fields  we  find 

Earth's  secret  open,  though  one  page  is  there  ; 

Her  plainest,  such  as  children  spell,  and  share 

With  bird  and  beast  ;  raised  letters  for  the  blind. 

Not  where  the  troubled  passions  toss  the  mind, 

In  turbid  cities,  can  the  key  be  bare. 

It  hangs  for  those  who  hither  thither  fare, 

Close  interthreading  nature  with  our  kind. 

They,  hearing  History  speak  of  what  men  were 

And  have  become,  are  wise.     The  gain  is  great 

In  vision  and  solidity  ;  it  lives. 

Yet  at  a  thought  of  life  apart  from  her, 

Solidity  and  vision  lose  their  state  ; 

For  Earth,  that  gives  the  milk,  the  spirit  gives.1 

The  book  of  Nature  is  but  one  page  of  the  book 
of  Earth,  a  page  itself  inexhaustible,  as  all  her  pages 

1  Earttts  Secret, 


THE  POEMS— " THE  JOY  OF  EARTH"    187 

are,  but  easy  reading  when  compared  with  those  that 
follow  it.  The  conception  of  Earth  starts  at  a  far 
humbler  level  than  that  of  Nature  and,  as  in  the  para- 
ble of  the  banquet,  hears  continually  the  call,  "  Friend, 
come  up  higher,"  to  enter  at  last  into  the  place  prepared 
for  the  master  of  the  revels,  to  become  the  presiding 
genius  at  the  feast.  Stoop  down  and  gather  up  the 
grains  of  dust  trodden  beneath  your  feet ;  here  already 
you  have  Earth  ;  here  you  have  something  which  forms 
at  once  the  foundation  and  the  crown  of  life. 

For  he  who  the  reckoning  sums 
Finds  nought  in  his  hand  save  Earth. 
Of  Earth  are  we,  stripped  or  crowned. l 

Or  consider  that  infinite,  starry  universe  which,  with 
the  moral  sense  in  man,  remained  the  mystery  of 
mysteries  to  the  great  mind  of  Kant.  Here  also,  in 
this  sublimest  pageant,  is  a  revelation  of  the  same 
spirit,  the  same  order,  that  animates  the  dust.  And 
this  spirit,  this  order,  man  recognises  even  among  the 
stars,  because  he  is  himself  its  child. 

The  fire  is  in  them  whereof  we  are  born  ; 
The  music  of  their  motion  may  be  ours.2 

Conceiving  thus  of  himself  and  of  the  stars  above  him, 
he  sees  Earth  with  new  eyes. 

A  wonder  edges  the  familiar  face  :  .  .  . 

Half  strange  seems  Earth,  and  sweeter  than  her  flowers. 

The  dust  can  never  again  be  mere  dust  to  him,  because, 
entering  into  it,  proceeding  from  it,  he  has  perceived  the 
Law  which  in  himself  he  knows  as  Reason,  the  Life 
which  in  himself  he  feels  as  Love.  And  he  has  per- 
ceived these  things,  not  as  properties  of  a  higher  life 
grafted  upon  a  lower — they  have  not  come  to  him  as 

1  A  Faith  on  Trial.  '  Meditation  under  Stars. 


1 88  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

messengers  from  some  ethereal  region  to  which  he 
looks  himself  to  be  translated  one  happier  day, — he  has 
perceived  them  to  be  the  foundation,  the  essence  of 
Life  as  he  actually  lives  it,  equally  manifested  in  the 
conditions  to  which  his  life  responds  and  in  the  active 
principle  which  responds  to  those  conditions  and  trans- 
forms them.  From  this  perception  is  born  the  love  of 
Earth. 

It  will  have  been  observed  already  that  the  entire 
range  of  human  nature  is  included  by  Meredith  in  the 
Earth  conception  ;  as  he  himself  says  of  it : — 

Earth  was  not  Earth,  before  her  sons  appeared.1 

Man  is  a  part  of  Earth,  and  neither  Earth  nor  Man  are 
rightly  understood  till  seen  in  true  relation  one  to 
another.  The  outlines  of  that  relation  are  indicated  by 
Meredith  in  one  of  his  noblest  poems — a  poem  sculp- 
turesque in  style,  magnificent  in  the  scale  and  propor- 
tion of  the  shaping  thought,  its  contour  cut  with  the 
terseness  and  finality  proper  to  great  work  in  stone, 
"  a  monument  more  durable  than  brass."  It  would  be 
hard  to  find  a  better  means  to  suggest  the  range  of  the 
Earth  conception,  than  by  unravelling  the  more  impor- 
tant of  the  ideas  expressed  in  this  great  ode. 

On  her  great  venture,  Man, 
Earth  gazes,  while  her  fingers  dint  the  breast 
Which  is  his  well  of  strength,  his  home  of  rest, 
And  fair  to  scan. 

Demeter,  the  eternal  Mother,  watches  and  wonders  at 
her  child  ;  for  motherly  embrace  she  gives  him  the 
fields,  the  woods,  the  hills,  the  valleys,  with  their 
beauty  and  their  shelter  ;  for  milk,  the  riches  of  her  har- 
vest. She  can  do  no  more ;  his  strength  he  drew  from 
her  ;  time  alone  can  show  how  he  will  use  it.  Use  it  he 
must,   for  strife   is  the  watchword   of   his  being ;    his 

1  Appreciation. 


THE  POEMS-"  THE  JOY  OF  EARTH-    189 

life  is  to  be  a  battle  and,  if  he  shirks  the  fight,  that 
force,  which  she  has  given  him  for  mastery  of  his  foe, 
will  turn  upon  its  possessor  to  destroy  him.  But  already 
the  battle  is  for  something  more  than  meat  ;  his 
goes  deeper  than  the  surface  ;  voices  from  the  heart  of 
his  Mother  sound  upon  his  ear ;  and  a  new  spirit 
animates  the  fray.  His  desires  still  drive  him  on  ;  but 
he  is  more  anxious  to  satisfy  than  to  understand  them  ; 
and  he  retards  his  advance  by  a  cumbrous  machinery 
that  obscures  the  end  for  which  he  planned  it.  Caught 
in  his  own  toils,  he  pictures  life  itself  as  a  mere  snare  ; 
his  nature,  his  origin,  his  destiny  baffle  him,  and  his 
perplexity  becomes  a  lurid  mask  hiding  from  him  the 
serenity  of  his  Mother's  face.  Like  a  child  upon  the 
breast,  dissatisfied,  he  appeals  fretfully  he  knows  not  to 
what,  because  his  Mother  will  not  give  him  what  he  may 
not  have.  He  had  supposed  she  existed  to  gratify  his 
whims  and,  finding  it  not  so,  he  is  afraid,  and  turns 
from  her  as  from  a  phantom  mocking  him  ;  or  again,  in 
revulsion  of  feeling,  endows  her  with  the  shallow  beauty 
of  the  dream-enchantress,  only  to  see  it  wither  before 
his  waking  eyes.  It  was  the  same  in  the  old  days  when 
he  worshipped  her  as  a  god.  No  offering  made  her  less 
terrible  in  exacting  the  uttermost  fulfilment  of  her  law. 
She  punishes  and  yet  she  fascinates,  and  he  is  for  ever 
striving  to  fathom  the  mystery  of  her  attraction  ;  and 
his  failure  to  fathom  it  he  takes  for  another  mystery  : 
though  the  last  has  a  simple  solution, — that  his  wits  are 
still  too  weak.     Meantime  the  relentless  rule  goes  on  : — 

He  may  entreat,  aspire, 

He  may  despair,  and  she  has  never  heed. 

She,  drinking  his  warm  sweat,  will  SOOthe  his  need, 

Not  his  desire. 

He  finds  his  impulse  to  happiness  nut,  from  very  child- 
hood, by  the  menace  of  the  tomb,  and  he  wonders  that 


190  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

he  is  not  himself  Earth's  chosen,  and  that  she  has  given 
the  better  place  to  better  men !  to  men  who  have  the 
endowment  she  requires,  who,  by  choice  or  instinct,  live 
nearest  to  her  law.  And  though  it  is  his  gradual  ap- 
proximation to  Earth's  law  which  has  lifted  Man  above 
the  brute  and  already  made  him  a  being  whose  life,  in 
part  at  least,  is  ruled  by  thought,  yet  the  wisdom  and 
virtue  of  this  law  is  darkened  in  him  by  the  perverting, 
cramping  tyranny  of  Self.  Tied  to  his  own  sensations, 
clinging  to  every  prospect  of  indulgence,  recoiling  from 
a  world  which  seems  to  put  a  term  to  his  enjoyment 
and  to  him,  he  robs  his  life  at  once  of  all  its  dignity  and 
all  its  purpose. 

Behold  his  wormy  home  ! 

And  he  the  wind-whipped  anywhither  wave, 

Crazily  tumbled  on  a  shingle-grave 

To  waste  in  foam. 

The  very  pathos  of  such  an  end  revolts  him  ;  it  cannot 
be.  This  stern  rule  is  a  delusion  ;  he  can  evade  it,  he 
can  rise  above  it.  What  he  sees  is  so  mysterious,  so 
baffling,  he  will  fortify  himself  against  it  with  the  greater 
mystery  of  what  he  cannot  see.  The  power  that  made 
Nature  meant  to  make  something  else  :  he  is  certain  of 
it :  he  has  faith  :  or  if  not  faith,  this  miracle,  that  denies 
Nature,  shall  give  him  a  conviction  just  as  good.  His 
life  is  more  precious  than  it  seems,  it  is  as  precious  as  he 
himself  would  have  it  be.  "  Take  me  from  Earth,"  he 
prays,  "  dear  Lord,  take  ME"  He  disowns  his  Mother, 
but  she  does  not  disown  her  son.  Without  him,  half 
her  faculty  must  have  remained  blind,  unfruitful,  and 
her  beauty  without  a  flower.  Take  man's  achievements 
from  her,  rob  her  of  order  and  of  decency,  of  art  and 
language,  thought  and  love,  and  Earth  were  barren 
indeed.  Therefore,  even  while  he  disowns  her,  she 
listens  to  his  words  with  pride,  grieving  only  for  the 


THE  POEMS— "  THE  JOY  OF  EARTH"    191 

blindness  which  parts  him  from  her  and  is  the  cause 
of  grief  in  him.  For  this  clamorous  appeal  of  his 
to  the  Above  is  but  an  outpouring  of  the  life  he 
drew  from  Earth  under  his  feet,  and  all  his  aspirations 
are  hers.  Sin  and  the  shadow  of  Death  she  hates  not 
less  than  he  does, 

And  her  desires  are  those 
For  happiness,  for  lastingness,  for  light. 
'Tis  she  who  kindles  in  his  haunting  night 
The  hoped  dawn-rose. 

The  gleam,  the  aspiration,  the  ideal  that  beckons  him, 
are  from  the  throbbing  of  her  pulse,  and  this  is  their  true 
interpretation — that  the  life  he  is  now  living,  the  Earth 
on  which  now  he  stands,  are  the  life  of  the  Spirit  and  the 
Spirit's  abode  :  that  Spiritual  Order,  which  he  prays  for 
and  pictures  to  himself  as  far  away,  closes  him  in  al- 
ready upon  every  side  ;  heaven  lies  about  him,  only  that 
he  is  in  his  infancy,  and  that  the  eyes  of  the  mind  are 
locked  and  he  cannot  rend  the  veil  aside  and  see.  One 
day  he  will  open  them,  and  that  is  the  day  on  which  his 
Mother's  heart  is  set.  The  veil  of  Self  will  wither  under 
a  fiery  ordeal,  and  of  the  fire  shall  be  born  light  and 
vision.  The  divine  life  will  reveal  itself,  the  mist  that 
obscured  it  will  be  rolled  away:  he  will  see  Earth 
irradiated  in  heavenly  brightness,  and  learn,  like  her,  to 
live,  not  for  himself,  but  for  his  kind,  for  the  generations 
yet  to  be.  Thus  will  he  bring  the  future  life  into  the 
present,  and  found  it  upon  a  rock.  He  will  better 
understand  those  tales  of  angel  and  of  devil,  heaven  and 
hell ;  he  will  gain  a  new  idea  of  faith.  Because  he  re- 
joices in  what  is,  he  will  be  able  to  trust  what  is  to  come. 
But  until  this  day  has  dawned,  until  the  earthly  life 
and  the  spiritual  life  are  one,  until  towards  the  goal  to 
which  his  Mother  calls  him  he  strives  with  all  the  powers 
she  gave,  he  has  not  entered   into  his  inheritance,  he 


.-,•  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

<  iimol  truly  be  Called  her  Child.      Meantime  she  watches, 

wonders:  his  destiny  waits  to  be  decided,  and  not  his 

alone    but    hers;    the    generations    of   men     pass    like 

autumn  leaves  i  her  hope  is  in  humanity,  in  the  spring 

.iikI  l  he  vii  I  ne  <>l  Ihe  tree 

To  conclude  this  chapter,  B  word  must  be  added  in 
connection  with  an  idea  presupposed  in  the  idea  of 
Earth,  li  will  have  been  observed  that  a  considerable 
part  "i  Earth  and  Man  is  devoted  to  the  exposure  of 
.1  fallacy,  which  Meredith  regards  as  very  grievous,  in- 
herent  in  the  common  understanding  of  religion  and 
it;  relation  to  the  resl  of  life.  Religion,  as  the  thought- 
less, and  even  as  some  thoughtful  persons,  profess  it,  is 
apt  to  be  taken,  as  it  were,  for  a  home  or  refuge,  to 

which  those  whom  Earth's  discipline  has  wearied,  may 
flee  foi  consolation,  The  disobedient  child  defies  the 
ichoolmastei  if,  in  the  last  resort,  he  can  find  shelter 
undei  his  mother's  win?.  And  mankind,  believing  the 
laws  oi  life,  as  Earth  upholds  them,  to  be  too  severe, 
tails  back  on  I  kind  o(  petticoat  protectorate,  where  to 

vague  talk  of  Mercy,  Grace,  and  I  ove  is  joined  a  com- 
fortable sense  that  out  present  state,  so  far  as  it  exacts 
I  more  elaborate,  more  fibrous,  and  if  the  word  may  be 
allowed,  rathei  less  sensational  scheme  of  virtues,  may 
be  treated  with  condescension  as   merely  temporary, 

and    set    aside   as    unadapted    to   evoke    01    Satisfy   the 

deepei   needs  o:  the  soul,      And  thus  the  human  race. 

having  come  to  be  what  it  is  by  obedience  to  Earth's 

law   save  •  the  hope  of  ig  that  higher 

devt  lent  to  which  she  continue-  to  summon  it      It 

on  this  at  that  Mere*   .'.-.  views  the  influence  of 

i     nmonhj   understood,  with  great  distrust 

He    -  ceivt  -  ■  mountain-climb  .  cy 

bj  endv   mce  malt  swaj   not  painlessly, and 

w  .....  v      .secstV.     mi  £  gorge  and  the 


THE  POEMS— "THE  JOY  OF  EARTH"  193 

far  light ; — and  then,  it  seems  to  him  that  religion  comes 
to  man  as  a  temptation  of  soul,  offering  him  wings  that 
cannot  lift  his  body  from  the  ground  and  persuading 
him  that  there  is  no  virtue  in  his  conflict  and  his  per- 
severance. The  true  spirit  of  religion,  Meredith  believes, 
is  something  totally  different.  To  approach  the  matter 
first  intellectually,1  he  recognises  that  his  conception  of 
Earth  as  spiritual  and  Man  as  the  developing  expression 
of  that  Spirit,  implies  the  existence  of  a  presiding  and 
unifying  Mind,  in  which  the  ideal  that  Earth  and  Man 
together  aim  at  is  present  already.  To  identify  itself 
with  the  Divine  purpose,  to  be  more  and  more  a  con- 
scious vehicle  for  the  expression  of  that  Reason,  which 
is  the  will  of  God,  here  is  the  object  of  all  human 
endeavour.  But  Meredith  hardly  ever  speaks  of  this 
unifying  Mind,  this  Divine  purpose,  in  the  large.  Few 
of  his  more  exalted  poems  pass  without  implied  refer- 
ence to  it,2  but  he  has  little  otherwise  to  say  of  it,  for 
one  grand  and  conclusive  reason  :  that  he  believes  our 
present  life,  with  its  sin,  sorrow,  and  suffering,  and  this 
harsh  Earth,  with  her  relentless,  inevitable  law,  to  be 
both  in  their  essence  and  in  all  that  may  appear  their 
accidents,  God's  revelation  of  himself  to  Man  :  for  that 
there  is  only  one  Divine  order,  and  this  is  everywhere 
present  and  everywhere  the  same.     It  is  for  this  reason 

1  Mr.  Trevelyan  will,  I  hope,  acquit  me  of  any  ungenerous  sentiment 
towards  his  helpful  and  delightful  exposition  of  Meredith's  practical 
philosophy,  if  I  feel  forced  to  record  my  conviction  that  in  denying  to  it 
a  systematic  idealist  foundation  he  has  placed  a  grievously  obscuring  veil 
between  his  author  and  the  public.  As  poet  or  novelist  it  was  no  part  of 
Meredith's  business  to  parade  a  system.  His  object  was  to  relate  it  to 
many-sided  human  life.  But  there  is  no  reason  in  supposing  that  because 
Meredith's  philosophy  is  consistent  with  sanity  and  common  sense,  the 
name  of  philosophy  should  be  denied  to  it.  No  one  has  shown  more  con- 
cern than  Meredith  to  maintain  the  prestige  and  dignity  of  philosophic 
thought.  And  it  would  be  hard  to  point  to  any  writer  in  the  history  of 
our  literature — outside  professional  philosophers — by  whom  they  have  been 
maintained  more  worthily. 

8  See  conclusion  to  A  Faith  on  Trial,  and  Hymn  to  Co/our. 


194  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

that  he  can  speak  of  the  human  ideal  as  shared  or  even 
as  inspired  by  Earth.  Man  is,  as  it  were,  the  climax  of 
a  continuous  creative  process,  a  process  guided  from 
the  beginning  by  an  implicit  purpose  ;  he  is  the  child  of 
his  conditions  ;  but  those  conditions  are  themselves  the 
manifestation  of  the  Spirit,  of  whose  working  his  own 
life  makes  him  conscious.  He  is  not  yet  what  he  shall 
be :  but  he  can  only  realise  all  that  he  has  it  in  him  to 
become,  by  placing  himself  in  harmony  with  the  great 
scheme  of  development :  he  must  build  his  future  upon 
his  past.  This  being  Meredith's  position  intellectually, 
his  religious  outlook,  the  attitude  of  heart  and  mind 
united,  with  which,  as  a  man,  he  views  man's  hope  and 
destiny,  is  wholly  conformable  to  it.  The  future  is  in 
His  hands  who  made  the  present,  and  calls  the  present 
good.  Man's  hankering  for  a  Heaven  in  which  Life 
shall  be  easier  and  sweeter  for  him  than  here  on  Earth 
is  so  much  lust  and  cowardice.  The  eternal  conditions 
of  true  living  are  placed  before  him  now.  The  question 
is  the  same,  whether  his  life  lasts  a  short  or  a  long  time, 
or  whether  it  is  everlasting.  And  the  question  is,  will 
he  meet  them,  and  as  a  child  of  the  Spirit  in  which  he 
and  they  unite,  will  he  meet  them  with  courage  and 
with  joy  ?  Will  he  face  the  facts  of  life  ?  Will  he  bend 
heart  and  mind  to  see  what  they  require  of  him,  and 
when  he  sees,  will  he  give  what  they  require  in  pride 
and  exultation  ?  Meredith  is  not  the  first  of  the  great 
sons  of  Earth  who  has  fought  the  good  fight  with  a 
manful  pride  grounded  upon  this  faith  that  is  humility. 
History  knows  other  names.  But  perhaps  he  is  the 
first  in  whom  the  courage  and  joy  have  themselves 
blossomed  in  a  spiritual  rapture.  He  sings  seldom. 
Much  of  his  verse  amounts  to  little  more  than  a  concise 
statement  of  belief,  poetic  only  by  reason  of  the  earnest- 
ness and  conviction  with  which  he  utters  it.     He  has 


THE  POEMS— "THE  JOY  OF  EARTH"    195 

striven  to  sing  ;  but  if  he  has  often  failed,  sometimes  he 
has  succeeded.  And  he  has  achieved  what  he  desired. 
For  man  has  heard  a  voice  which,  heard  once,  can  never 
be  forgotten.  A  son  of  Earth  has  seen  and  known  the 
Mother,  and  of  his  joy  in  her  has  made  a  living,  an  im- 
mortal thing. 


CHAPTER    XV 
THE   POEMS— NATURE 

IT  must  always  be  a  main  part  of  the  criticism  of 
every  poet  to  define  his  attitude  to  Nature.  The 
growing  complexity  and  artificiality  of  modern  life 
tend  to  produce  in  many  minds  the  illusion  that  man 
is  sufficient  to  himself.  There  is,  of  course,  a  great 
deal  of  talk  about  the  "  country,"  and  of  the  virtues 
arising  from  the  simple  life  to  be  found  there ;  but,  for 
the  most  part,  this  is  talk  and  nothing  more  :  and  those 
whose  tongues  move  fastest  on  the  subject  are  probably 
those  who  care  about  and  understand  it  least.  Even 
among  serious-minded  men  there  are  not  a  few  whose 
political  or  social  duties  are  too  engrossing  to  allow 
them  due  occasion  to  consider  what  is  man's  real 
relation  to  the  world  he  lives  in  ;  they  are  occupied 
wholly  with  adjusting  the  relations  of  men  to  one 
another.  And  so  to  these,  as  to  the  others,  the  world 
of  Nature  becomes  a  mere  recreation  ground.  They 
may  appreciate  it  vaguely  for  its  beauties  or  for  the 
advantages  it  has  to  offer,  to  some  of  exercise,  to  others 
of  retirement ;  but  there  is  little  or  nothing  in  their 
mental  and  moral  outfit  which  they  recognise  as  a 
direct  inheritance  bequeathed  to  them  by  the  powers 
of  earth  or  sea  or  sky.     And  thus  arises  the  tendency  to 

196 


THE   POEMS— NATURE  197 

imagine  that  poetry  deals  with  these  things  because  it 
is  poetry ;  that  is,  to  be  candid,  because  being  a  far  less 
serious  thing  than  the  practical  life,  it  affects  to  be  the 
more  serious  of  the  two,  and  hopes  to  impress  society 
with  its  seriousness  by  flying  high. 

In  Persia,  wine,  the  rose,  and  the  nightingale  became 
stock  subjects  for  poetry,  and  whoever  wished  to  in- 
dulge in  a  dignified  sentimentality  had  them  ready  to 
his  hand.  It  was  not  that  there  was  anything  more 
poetical  in  these  than  in  any  other  subjects ;  it  was 
merely  that  dilettante  writers  had  learned  the  trick  of 
using  them  :  literary  convention  had  built  them  a  shrine 
apart ;  through  them  was  the  only  approach  to  the 
sacred  enclosure  of  the  Muses.  Now  it  is  a  general 
suspicion — latent,  if  not  overt — in  the  minds  of  many 
English  readers  that  Nature  plays  for  our  poets,  in 
a  style  more  impressive  only  because  it  is  more 
complicated,  just  such  a  tune  as  was  played  for  their 
Persian  brethren  by  wine,  the  nightingale,  and  the 
rose.  The  consequence  of  this  suspicion  is  that  the 
attempt  to  define  a  poet's  conception  of  Nature  becomes 
a  singularly  thankless  task.  It  is  as  if  the  critic  were 
required  to  explain  how  yet  another  superannuated 
child  played  with  the  toys  earth  held  out  to  him,  and 
was  deluded  into  supposing  that  these  toys  could  be 
the  serious  concern  of  grown-up  men.  Yet  it  remains 
a  fact  that  the  delusion  is  shared  by  all  true  poets,  and 
certainly  the  critic  of  George  Meredith  is  the  last  who 
can  afford  to  pass  it  by.  The  truth  about  the  matter 
seems  to  be  this — that  poets,  though  often  unpractical, 
and  ignorant  or  careless  of  much  that  is  desirable  or 
even  necessary  in  civilised  life,  have  yet  on  the  whole  a 
view  both  simpler  and  juster  than  that  which  commonly 
obtains,  as  to  the  foundational  realities  on  which  the 
complex    structure,   known    as   civilisation,   rests;  and 


198  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

therefore,  in  their  account  of  the  mind  of  man,  which  is 
the  main  product  of  that  civilisation  and  the  principal 
subject  of  their  art,  they  occupy  themselves  largely 
with  influences  which  seem  to  be  trivial  or  external, 
because  they  believe  they  can  trace  in  them  a  sustain- 
ing framework  necessary  to  the  mind's  development 
and  health,  and  deprived  of  which,  if  we  can  imagine,  it 
deprived  of  them,  not  only  must  it  fail  to  rise,  it  would 
not  for  one  moment  maintain  the  level  it  has  reached 
already.  Chief  among  these  influences  is  Nature,  the 
"  changeful,  visible  force "  of  mother  Earth.  Now 
Meredith,  though  poet,  is  yet  a  man  whom  the  apostles 
of  practical  efficiency  cannot  afford  to  overlook.  The 
Shaving  of  Shagpat,  with  which  he  opened  his  career, 
has  efficiency,  one  may  say,  for  its  watchword. 

Lo  !  of  hundreds  who  aspire 
Eighties  perish,  nineties  tire. 

He   has   done   neither.      Yet   we    find    that   he   is   at 

one   with  all   other    poets   in  writing   of  trees,   birds, 

clouds,  flowers,  as  if  the  knowledge  and  understanding 

of  them  played  an  important  part,  not  merely  in  the 

adornment  of  life,  but  in  its  sanity  and  stability ;  as 

if  they   were  necessary    ingredients,   so   to    speak,   of 

truth  and  righteousness.     In  one  of  his  most  striking 

poems   he   describes   how,    at   a    moment   of    deepest 

personal  sorrow,  he  walked  over  the  hills  and  through 

the  woods,  turning  to  the  familiar  sights  and  sounds  of 

earth  to  restore  to  him  his  strength  and  courage,  and 

not  failing  to   find   a  response  in   them   to   his   need. 

Even   at  such  a  time  as  this  he  does  not  think  it  an 

irrelevance  to  tell  us  what  the  leaves  or  the  birds  are 

doing.  _„    ,  „  ,      ,    , 

Weak  out  of  sheath,  downy  leaves 

Of  the  beech  quivered  lucid  as  dew, 

Their  radiance  asking — who  grieves  ? 

For  nought  of  a  sorrow  they  knew  : 


THE    POEMS— NATURE  199 

No  space  to  the  dread  wrestle  vowed, 

No  chamber  in  shadow  of  night. 
At  times  as  the  steadier  breeze 

Flutter-huddled  their  twigs  to  a  crowd  .  .  -1 

Here,  clearly,  is  a  poet  whose  "  attitude  to  Nature " 
is  something  genuine  and  vital,  no  ornamental  play- 
thing, but  a  matter  about  which  he  is  profoundly  in 
earnest.  Yet  why,  we  ask,  are  we  to  consider  it  a 
point  of  deep  emotional  significance  how  beech-leaves 
behave  before  the  wind,  or  what  the  song  of  a  bird  is 
like  ?  To  this  question  Meredith  has  taken  care  that 
his  poetical  work  shall  provide  the  clearest  possible 
answer. 

In  one  of  his  lesser  poems,  a  lyric  called  Outer  and 
Inner,  written  in  a  style  and  method  peculiarly  charac- 
teristic of  its  author,  he  makes  it  his  central  aim  to 
explain  and  justify  his  "attitude  to  Nature."  The 
scene  is  in  the  woods  on  a  sultry  afternoon  in  August. 
Stillness  reigns,  and  when  a  motion  of  the  air  stirs 
faintly  the  lighter  leaves,  it  is  as  if  the  earth  were 
breathing.  Stronger  than  ever  is  the  poet's  conviction 
that  there  is  a  life  in  the  world  of  Nature  which  is  akin 
to  his  own.  But  how  is  he  to  reach  this  central  heart  of 
things,  how  feel  the  rhythmical  pulsation  and  win  for 
himself  something  of  its  strength  and  constancy  ?  The 
reply  is  not  what  we  should  expect  a  poet  to  give :  by 
observation,  by  curbing  the  reins  of  fancy,  by  self- 
forgetfulness.  He  chooses,  one  by  one,  delicate  points 
of  detail  that  catch  his  eye,  and  describes  them  in 
a  succession  of  broken  sentences  whose  accuracy  of 
image  is  their  charm  :  the  movement  of  the  spider, 
the  scent  of  the  leaves,  the  sound  of  the  flies  that  rise 
in  a  swarm  from  the  path  as  he  goes  by,  the  iridescent 
light  upon  a  cobweb  stretched  in  a  cool,  dark  corner 
where  the  dew  lingers  still. 

1  A  Faith  on  Trial, 


200  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

My  world  I  note  ere  fancy  comes, 

Minutest  hushed  observe  : 
What  busy  bits  of  motioned  wits 

Through  antlered  mosswork  strive. 

(Though  the  woods  are  asleep,  the  ants  are  working 

'"'  But  now  so  low  the  stillness  hums, 

My  springs  of  seeing  swerve, 
For  half  a  wink  to  thrill  and  think 
The  woods  with  nymphs  alive. 

He  puts  the  point  at  first  half  humorously,  perhaps 
partly  for  fear  the  ants  might  be  disturbed  by  it, 
partly  that  he  may  take  the  reader  at  unawares  and 
give  him  without  offence  what  he  has  most  at  heart  to 
give  him,  and  what  is,  after  all,  a  moral ; — how  should 
it  be  anything  else  ? 

I  neighbour  the  invisible 

So  close  that  my  consent 
Is  only  asked  for  spirits  masked 

To  leap  from  trees  and  flowers. 
And  this  because  with  them  I  dwell 

In  thought,  while  calmly  bent 
To  read  the  lines  dear  Earth  designs 

Shall  speak  her  life  on  ours. 

In  a  final  stanza  he  amplifies  this  in  connection  with  a 
still  deeper  vein  of  thought,  which  has  been  made  the 
subject  of  the  preceding  chapter. 

Consider  Meredith's  practice  as  exemplified  in  any 
other  of  the  poems  in  which  he  goes  direct  to  Nature 
for  his  subject — Hard  Weather,  The  South-  Wester, 
The  Thrush  in  February,  A  Night  of  Frost  in 
May — and  you  will  feel  no  doubt  that  he  has  given 
in  Outer  and  Inner  the  secret  of  his  poetic  method. 
And  we  may  say  at  once  that,  so  far  as  he  fails  as  a 
Nature  poet,  it  is  because  he  has  written  according  to  a 
theory,  and,  so  far  as  he  succeeds,  he  succeeds  because 
his  theory  has  so  much  in  it  of  the  vitality  and  fruit- 
fulness   of   truth.      It   will    be    interesting   to    analyse 


THE    POEMS— NATURE  201 

in  some  detail  a  poem  in  which  Meredith  applies  his 

theory  with  astounding  mastery — The  Lark  Ascending. 

For  the  opening  verses  nothing  short  of  quotation  can 

suffice  : — 

He  rises  and  begins  to  round, 

He  drops  the  silver  chain  of  sound 

Of  many  links  without  a  break, 

In  chirrup,  whistle,  slur  and  shake, 

All  intervolved  and  spreading  wide, 

Like  water-dimples  down  a  tide 

Where  ripple  ripple  overcurls 

And  eddy  into  eddy  whirls. 

A  more  exquisitely  suggestive  and  yet  more  exqui- 
sitely literal  description,  whether  of  song  of  lark  or  of 
any  other  object,  is  probably  nowhere  to  be  found, 
unless,  indeed,  Meredith  himself  has  produced  it;1  it  is 
as  if  the  lark  himself  were  singing  ;  and  the  description 
continues,  tireless  as  the  lark  himself,  for  a  matter  of 
sixty  lines  or  more ;  losing  nothing  of  its  force,  shower- 
ing one  image  after  another,  all  felicitous  and  some 
supremely  so,  leaving  the  reader  at  last  with  the  con- 
viction that  he  never  before  knew  what  song  of  lark 
could  be,  that  he  has  heard  it  now  for  the  first  time. 
And  if  he  has  now  heard  it,  if  he  has  listened  to  the 
song  indeed,  he  will  be  ready  to  ask  and  to  understand 
what  its  meaning  is  and  why  he  delights  in  it.  Briefly, 
the  lark  is  a  fountain  overflowing  with  the  joy  of  life ; 
he  is  the  child  of  Earth,  and  whatever  is  glad  and  kindly 
in  the  works  of  Nature  is  of  his  kin. 

He  sings  the  sap,  the  quickened  veins, 
The  wedding  song  of  sun  and  rains 
He  is,  the  dance  of  children,  thanks 
Of  sowers,  shout  of  primrose  banks. 

This  and  much  more  besides  is  to  be  found  in  him  by 
such  as  are  content  to  remember  that  he  is  still  no  more 

1  The  singing  of  the  nightingales  in  A  Night  of  Frost  in  May  is  perhaps 
even  greater  as  a  tour  de  force,  but  it  has  not  the  same  naturalness. 


202  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

than  a  little  feathery  bird.  A  bird  he  is — no  spirit — 
and  a  bird  he  must  remain  :  the  gladness  and  madness 
of  the  poet  are  different  from  anything  he  knows : 
they  are  at  once  greater  and  less.  For  the  lark  is 
indeed  all  a  lark,  but  even  the  poet  is  still  only  half 
a  man. 

Was  never  voice  of  ours  could  say 

Our  inmost  in  the  sweetest  way, 

Like  yonder  voice  aloft,  and  link 

All  hearers  in  the  song  they  drink  : 

Our  wisdom  speaks  from  failing  blood, 

Our  passion  is  too  full  in  flood  ; 

We  want  the  key  of  his  wild  note 

Of  truthful  in  a  tuneful  throat, 

The  song  seraphically  free 

Of  taint  of  personality. 

And  here  there  is  a  question  raised  that  cannot  be  left 
without  an  answer.  It  seems  that  the  lark  has  a  secret 
which  mankind  has  missed.  Who,  then,  among  men 
comes  nearest  to  the  discovery  of  it  ?  Whom  shall  we 
most  fitly  liken  to  the  lark  ?  To  look  for  him  among 
mere  singers  would  be  a  superficiality  ;  the  resemblance 
must  be  sought  in  some  deeper  aspect  of  their  common 
relation  to  Mother  Earth.  The  value  of  the  lark's  song 
is  the  wholeheartedness  of  rapture  it  expresses,  the  spon- 
taneous assurance  contained  in  it  that  life  is  good.  He 
has  learned  to  live  according  to  Earth's  ordinance,  and 
from  the  material  which  Earth  has  offered  him  he  has 
produced  a  harmony.  The  same  wholeheartedness  of 
rapture  is  not  yet  compassable  by  man  :  for  man's  life 
is  not  yet  harmonious  ;  but  surely,  in  the  meantime,  those 
men  are  nearest  to  the  lark  who  are  laying  now  the 
foundations  of  a  grander  harmony  in  the  future ; 

Whose  lives,  by  many  a  battle  dint 
Defaced,  and  grinding  wheels  on  flint, 
Yield  substance,  though  they  sing  not,  sweet 
For  song  our  highest  heaven  to  greet. 


THE    POEMS— NATURE  203 

These  are  the  true  singers,  the  true  soarers  ;  and  it  is 
only  because  here  and  there  he  sees  such  an  one  among 
us,  that  a  poet,  worthy  the  name,  can  sing  at  all. 

Wherefore  their  soul  in  me,  or  mine 

Through  self  forgetfulness  divine 

In  them,  that  song  aloft  maintains, 

To  fill  the  sky  and  thrill  the  plains 

With  showerings  drawn  from  human  stores. 

Thus,  finally,  the  lark  ascending  grows  to  a  symbol  of 

all  human  progress,  progress  that  comes  of  effort   in 

obedience  to  the  laws  of  life.     It  was  by  such  obedience, 

given  instinctively,  that  the  lark  learned  to  soar  and 

sing ;    and  man,  who  has  indeed  other  things  to  learn, 

cannot  learn  them   in  any  other  way.     Only  let  him 

begin  with  that,  and  there  is  no  limit  we  can  set  to  the 

possibilities  of  his  achievement.     As  we  follow  him  in 

his  ascent,  the  earth  itself,  because  it  is  his  dwelling, 

seems  to  grow  more  spacious,  more  august.      Up  and 

up  he  goes,  with  earth  still  broadening  beneath  him,  till 

at  last  we  can  follow  him  no  more  ;  for,  like  the  lark,  he 

is  lost  to  us, 

Lost  on  his  aerial  rings 
In  light ;  and  then  the  fancy  sings. 

But,  following  the  lark,  we  have  risen  somewhat  above 
the  level  of  the  subject  immediately  before  us.  Ac- 
cording to  Meredith's  conception,  if  we  were  able  to 
follow  him  so  far,  the  reason  was  that  we  were  willing 
first  to  see  him  and  be  content  with  him  for  what  he 
was.  For  to  see  Nature  poetically  is  not  to  read  into 
her  a  meaning,  an  emotion  supplied  arbitrarily  by  the 
observer  ;  rather  it  is  to  clear  the  mind  of  all  disturbing 
passion,  to  refuse  to  turn  to  the  world  about  us  as  to  a 
mirror  of  our  personal  feelings,  or  choose  in  it  only 
what  is  in  accordance  with  the  passing  mood,  to  come 


204  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

before  Nature  with  heart  and  mind  alike  unprejudiced, 
unclouded,  ready  to  see,  not  what  we  want  to  see,  but 
what  is  there ;  anxious  not  to  give  rein  to  promiscuous 
emotion,  but  to  respond  sensitively,  truly,  adequately  to 
whatever  there  is  in  the  scene  Earth  offers  to  kindle 
mind  and  heart.  There  is  a  well-known  passage  in 
Coleridge's  great  Ode  Dejection  which  appears  at 
first  sight,  at  least,  to  have  a  contrary  significance ; 
and  with  a  view  to  defining  Meredith's  position  with 
greater  clearness,  we  shall  do  well  to  quote  it.  The 
words  are  among  the  most  beautiful,  the  most  passion- 
ate in  our  language  : — 

O  Lady  !  we  receive  but  what  we  give 
And  in  our  life  alone  does  nature  live  : 
Ours  is  her  wedding-garment,  ours  her  shroud  ! 

And  would  we  aught  behold  of  higher  worth 
Than  that  inanimate  cold  world,  allowed 
To  the  poor,  loveless,  ever-anxious  crowd, 

Ah  !  from  the  soul  itself  must  issue  forth 
A  light,  a  glory,  a  fair  luminous  cloud 

Enveloping  the  earth. 

And  the  name  of  this  glory  and  of  this  light  is  joy. 
Coleridge  is  stating  here,  with  all  the  fervour  of  a  poet, 
a  truth  on  which  the  whole  philosophy  of  idealism  is 
founded.  But  there  is  nothing  in  Meredith's  philosophy 
which  is  opposed  to  it ;  in  fact,  what  chiefly  concerns 
him  is  the  statement  of  the  same  truth,  only  that  he 
states  it  from  a  different  point  of  view  and,  in  particular, 
attaches  no  importance  to  his  feelings  about  the  truth, 
except  so  far  as  he  believes  them  to  accord  with  it. 
With  Coleridge  it  is  otherwise.  In  spite  of  the  spon- 
taneous grandeur,  the  irresistible  melody  of  his  verse, 
the  reader  who  considers  closely  the  attitude  of  mind 
lying  behind  it  will  detect  this  flaw :  that  the  poet, 
though  professing  to  exalt  that  creative  joy  which 
makes   the  universe  intelligible,  and   praying  the  gift 


THE    POEMS— NATURE  205 

of    it    for    his    lady,   is,    nevertheless,    acquiescing    in, 

and    by    his    acquiescence    augmenting,    that    mental 

condition  in  himself  which  he  knows  to  be  destructive 

of  it  :— 

A  grief  without  a  pang,  void,  dark,  and  drear, 
A  stifled,  drowsy,  unimpassion'd  grief, 
Which  finds  no  natural  outlet,  no  relief, 
In  word,  or  sigh,  or  tear, — 

and  on  this  account  even  the  joy  of  which  he  speaks 
later  loses  a  part  of  the  exhilarating  influence  it  ought 
to  exercise,  because  the  enthusiasm  with  which  he 
speaks  of  it  is  seen  partly  to  depend  upon  the  contrast 
it  offers  to  his  present  state ;  he  is  praising  it  and 
magnifying  it  as  a  thing  that  he  has  not  got ;  and  in 
the  meantime  he  is  giving  a  giant's  power,  not  to 
recovering  it,  but  to  lamentation  for  its  loss.  Now, 
for  Meredith  also,  the  key  to  understanding  of  the  world 
is  a  kind  of  joy ;  but,  strangely  enough,  it  is  a  kind 
of  joy  that  comes  through  grief,  not,  indeed,  through 
a  drowsy,  but  what  might  rather  be  called  a  disciplinary, 
grief.  He  thinks  it  is  the  general  tendency  of  in- 
dividual men — and  a  tendency  not  always  overcome 
even  by  poets — to  set  more  than  due  store  by  their 
sensations ;  and  that  therefore  the  kind  of  joy  in 
which  their  nature  overflows,  though  it  may  have  the 
charm  of  spontaneity,  yet  tends  to  be  something  self- 
centred  and  narrow — a  quite  different  kind  of  joy  from 
that  which  leads  them  to  understand  the  beauty  of  the 
world  and  to  delight  in  it.  To  attain  to  this  latter 
joy,  a  man  must  first  get  a  just  appreciation  of  the 
meaning  of  his  own  existence,  of  which  a  leading  fact 
is  that  he  is  merely  one  man  among  many.  And  so 
inevitable  is  the  tendency  of  young  blood  to  overrate 
itself  and  to  regard  the  satisfaction  of  its  impulses  as 
a  right,  that  this  just  self-appreciation  and  the  true  joy 


206  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

based  upon  it  are,  he  thinks,  seldom  to  be  had  except 
as  the  price  of  a  sobering  experience. 

Not  ere  the  bitter  herb  we  taste, 
Which  ages  thought  of  happy  times, 
To  plant  us  in  a  weeping  waste, 
Rings  with  our  fellows  this  one  heart 
Accordant  chimes.1 

Meredith,  then,  knows,  not  less  than  Coleridge,  that  it 
is  through  the  individual's  power  to  think  and  feel  that 
the  world  becomes  a  living  thing,  a  revelation  to  him  of 
beauty  and  order ;  but  he  more  clearly  recognises,  or  at 
least  is  far  more  careful  to  state,  that  thought  and 
feeling,  if  they  are  left  to  themselves,  are  not  at  all  to  be 
relied  on  to  bring  the  individual  into  touch  with  the 
transcendent  beauty  and  splendour  of  the  universe  ;  and 
as  to  the  mist  that  issues  from  them,  too  often,  Meredith 
thinks,  it  cannot  be  called  either  "fair"  or  "  luminous," 
but  must  rather  be  thought  of  as  a  dense  fog,  in  which, 
groping,  the  individual  loses  all  idea  of  the  actual  relations 
of  things  outside  him,  and  sees  nothing  but  an  enlarged 
and  distorted  shadow  of  himself.  To  see  truly,  to  attain 
to  a  vision  of  the  world  as  it  is,  is  a  creative  act,  and  no 
man  can  achieve  it,  unless,  with  whatever  strength  he  has 
of  love  and  joy,  he  has  submitted  to  a  discipline  which 
may  compel  him  to  love  what  things  are  indeed  lovely 
and  to  rejoice  where  joy  is  due.  In  short,  the  creative 
joy,  to  be  creative,  to  be  the  source  of  a  true  revelation 
of  nature  and  of  man,  must  be  founded  on  a  certain 
kind  of  humility  and  self-abnegation  ;  and  this,  in  the 
individual's  relation  to  his  fellows,  appears  as  sympathy, 
and  involves  his  taking  the  claim  of  mankind  upon  him, 
rather  than  his  claim  on  mankind,  as  the  centre  of  his 
spiritual  gravity;  and,  in  his  relation  to  Nature,  similarly 
demands  that  he  shall  cease  to  regard  his  own  emotions 
as  the  source  of  beauty  in  the   world,  and    recognise 

1   The  Lesson  of  Grief. 


THE    POEMS— NATURE  207 

rather  that  it  is  the  beauty  of  the  world,  if  only  he  will 
rightly  attend  to  it,  which  evokes  and  nourishes  and 
sustains  in  him  that  power  of  emotion  which  is  his  life, 
He  cannot  indeed  see  the  world  truly  except  through 
emotion,  or  through  joy;  but  emotion,  though  there  is  no 
true  vision  without  it,  will  not,  merely  by  its  presence, 
make  his  vision  true.  For  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
spiritual,  as  well  as  physical,  intoxication,  a  state  of 
spurious  ecstasy  that  clouds  rather  than  clears  the 
mind. 

To  approach  Nature  thus  is  to  approach  her  in  a 
spirit  similar  to  that  first  made  familiar  to  the  world  by 
Wordsworth,  with  whom  Meredith,  in  spite  of  radical 
differences  of  temperament  and  outlook,  has  much  in 
common.  Indeed  you  may  find  passages  here  and 
there  in  Meredith's  poetry  which,  except  in  point  of 
diction,  might  have  been  written  by  Wordsworth 
himself.  Perhaps  the  most  notable  example  is  from 
The  Thrush  in  February,  where,  describing  his  own 
practical  ideal  and  the  benefit  he  has  of  it,  Meredith 

'     '  So  mine  are  these  new  fruitings  rich 

The  simple  to  the  common  brings ; 
I  keep  the  youth  of  those  who  pitch 
Their  joy  in  this  old  heart  of  things. 

Attempting  to  indicate  the  true  attitude  of  Man  to 
Nature,  Wordsworth  spoke  of  a  "  wise  passiveness." 
The  problem  left  by  him  unsolved  was  how  that  wisdom 
in  passivity  was  to  be  attained.  Meredith,  by  a  refer- 
ence to  his  "  disciplined  habit  to  see,"  shows  that  in 
him  at  least  the  secret  of  this  wisdom  was  not  innate, 
or  rather  that  he  was  not  content  to  leave  it  as  he 
found  it.  It  is  to  be  remarked  that  throughout  his 
Nature  poetry  his  main  effort  is  to  achieve  the  emo- 
tional unity  essential  in  a  poem  without  sacrificing 
fidelity  of  observation,  and  that  he  is  readier  to  forego 


2o8  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

unity  than  truth.  The  obscurity  of  many  of  his  descrip- 
tive passages  is,  curiously  enough,  the  result  of  this  very 
desire  for  accuracy.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  note 
that  a  poetic  description  is  not  addressed,  as  a  scientific 
description  is,  to  those  who  are  unfamiliar  with  the 
object,  with  a  view  to  enable  them  to  recognise  it  at 
first  sight ;  in  a  poetic  description  knowledge  of  the 
object  is  always  assumed,  and  except  to  those  who 
possess  such  knowledge  the  description  is  generally 
valueless.  Meredith's  range  of  observation  is  un- 
usually wide ;  he  has  made  himself  familiar  with 
many  subtleties  of  natural  phenomena  which  poets 
ordinarily  leave  unexplored  ;  and  he  is  apt  to  postu- 
late in  his  readers  the  familiarity  which  he  himself 
possesses.  It  will  be  interesting  to  take  a  few  ex- 
amples of  clearness  passing  to  obscurity — due  mainly 
to  this  cause. 

Or,  where  old-eyed  oxen  chew 

Speculation  with  the  cud, 
Read  their  pool  of  vision  through 

Back  to  hours  when  mind  was  mud.1 

Of  course  there  is  more  here  than  description  ;  but, 
taken  merely  for  its  descriptive  value,  the  passage  must 
rank  high,  and  no  one  could  miss  the  force  of  it  who 
had  ever  looked  into  the  face  of  a  cow. 

The  foxgloves  drop  from  throat  to  top 
A  daily  lesser  bell.- 

This  is  exquisitely  felicitous ;  yet,  in  a  land  where  fox- 
gloves were  unknown,  what  meaning  would  be  con- 
veyed by  it? 

There  chimed  a  bubbled  underbrew 
With  witch-wild  spray  of  vocal  dew.3 

Who,  that  knows  it,  can  deny  the  appropriateness  of 
this  to  what  might  be  called  the  "  passage  work,"  the 

1  The  Woods  of '  Wesiermain.     2  Outer and Inner,     *  Night  of  Frost  in  May. 


THE   POEMS— NATURE  209 

more  troubled  and  yet  less  vital,  less  melodious  parts, 
of  the  song  of  the  nightingale?  Yet  upon  those 
who  have  not  attended  to  the  song  and  analysed  it 
the  suggestiveness  of  the  words  is  lost.  The  piece 
known  as  The  South-Wester  might  be  quoted  entire 
in  illustration  of  this  same  point.  Here  are  the 
opening  lines  : — 

Day  of  the  cloud  in  fleets  !     O  day 
Of  wedded  white  and  blue,  that  sail 
Immingled,  with  a  footing  ray 
In  shadow-sandals  down  our  vale  ! — 
And  swift  to  ravish  golden  meads, 
Swift  up  the  run  of  turf  it  speeds, 
Thy  bright  of  head  and  dark  of  heel ; 
To  where  the  hill-top  flings  on  sky, 
As  hawk  from  wrist  or  dust  from  wheel, 
The  tiptoe  scalers  tossed  to  fly. 

The  poetic  value  of  this  passage  is  its  fidelity,  both  of 
thought  and  feeling,  to  the  chosen  theme.  All  through 
the  poem  Meredith  keeps  eye  and  mind  focussed  upon 
the  object,  with  a  view  to  make  his  verse  the  vehicle,  not 
of  a  vague  rapture,  but  precisely  of  those  images,  ideas, 
emotions  roused  in  his  mind,  particularly  in  the  South 
of  England,  on  a  day  when  the  wind  is  blowing  from 
the  south-west ;  and  the  intelligibility  of  the  poem 
to  one  or  another  reader  depends  primarily  on  the 
extent  to  which  he  has  entered  into  the  experiences  on 
which  it  is  based. 

Of  course,  the  final  poetic  achievement  would  be 
to  combine  this  accuracy  of  focus  with  a  sustained 
emotional  exaltation — such,  for  example,  as  every  one 
recognises  in  the  choric  passages  of  the  Prometheus 
Unbound.  This  kind  of  exaltation  is  for  the  most  part 
accepted  by  poets  and  by  their  readers  as  an  end  in 
itself,  and  the  attaining  it,  at  whatever  sacrifice  of  objec- 
tive truth,  the  touchstone  of  true  poetry.  Meredith, 
however,  is  never  satisfied  with  it.     Admit  that  it  is,  on 


210  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

the  whole,  a  fault  in  his  poetry  that  the  element  of 
passion,  the  only  reliable  source  of  artistic  unity,  takes 
too  often  a  secondary  place,  the  explanation,  if  not  the 
justification,  of  this  fault  is  to    be  found  in  his  firm 
resolve  never  to  allow  passion  to  become  lawless  and 
unbridled,  or  to  substitute  itself  for  the  object  as  centre 
of  interest  or  as  formative  principle  guiding  the  narra- 
tion.    His  ideal  is  to  have  passion  for  a  servant,  not  a 
master.     He   is  not  content  to  be  a  mere  poet,  one 
in  whom    passion    leads.     He  must   have   an  equality 
of  thought  and  passion,  passion  and  thought  made  one. 
He  looks  to  an  ideal  state,  ahead  of  Plato's,  in  which  the 
philosophers    are   poets    and    the    poets    philosophers. 
And  his  contribution  to  the  attainment  of  the  ideal  is  a 
kind   of  poetry,   in   which  the  emphasis  is  constantly 
laid  upon  the  actuality  that  underlies  each  thought  and 
image,  in  which  the  poetic  content  is  not  the  emotion 
kindled    by   earth    or  sea  or  sky,  but  earth,  sea,   sky 
themselves  as  revealed  to  thought  by  the  emotion  they 
enkindle.      Perhaps  he  approaches  nearest  to  perfect 
fulfilment  of  his  aim  in  the  Hymn  to  Colour.     There  is 
hardly  a  line  or  a  phrase  in  this  sublime  allegory  of 
Life  and  Death  and  Love  but  recalls  with  exactitude 
some  living  feature  of  colour,  outline,  or  atmosphere,  to 
enhance   the   splendour   of  that   vision   of  the   dawn, 
of  which  the  allegory  is  a  spiritual  interpretation.     So 
keen  is  Meredith  in  his  loyalty  to  the  inspiring  object, 
that  there  are  passages  even  in   the  Hymn  to  Colour 
where  the  observer  is  allowed  momentarily  to  usurp  the 
poet's  place.     The  lines — 

But  Love  remembers  how  the  sky  was  green, 
And  how  the  grass-blades  glimmered  lightest  blue, 

may  be  quoted  as  an  example  of  this.     But  the  poet, 
even   at   the  moment   of  supreme  rapture,  maintains 


THE   POEMS— NATURE  211 

still  his  "  disciplined  habit  to  see,"  and  becomes  im- 
measurably greater  as  a  poet  on  that  account. 

Love  saw  the  emissary  eglantine 
Break  wave  round  thy  white  feet  above  the  gloom  ; 
Lay  finger  on  thy  star  ;  thy  raiment  line 
With  cherub  wing  and  limb  ;  wed  thy  soft  bloom, 
Gold-quivering  like  sun-rays  in  thistle-down, 
Earth  under  rolling  brown. 

This  indeed  is  the  sunrise  as  Love  sees  it ;  it  is 
Nature,  as  revealed  to  that  poetic  vision  before  which 
the  veil  is  withdrawn,  and  the  Spirit  of  Earth  appears 
clothed  in  that  same  strength  and  beauty  which  man 
himself  aspires  to  and  which,  whenever  he  recognises 
them,  he  worships. 


CHAPTER   XVI 
THE   POEMS— MAN 

IN  the  two  preceding  chapters  we  have  attempted  to 
analyse  and  define,  first,  the  conception  which  is 
the  inspiring  source  of  the  whole  of  Meredith's  mature 
poetic  work,  the  conception  of  Earth  as  a  great 
spiritual  unity,  embracing  both  Nature  and  Man  ;  and, 
secondly,  the  message  which  he  believes  that  Nature, 
the  simpler  and  more  primitive  expression  of  the  life  of 
Earth,  has  to  offer  to  Man,  her  latest  born.  Meredith 
is  the  poet  of  evolution.  According  to  his  idea,  the 
value  to  Man  of  the  study  of  Nature  is  that  in  Nature 
he  finds  the  conditions  out  of  which  he  has  himself 
emerged ;  or,  to  put  it  more  accurately,  from  which  he 
neither  has  emerged  nor  ever  can  ;  to  which,  rather,  he 
still  is  and  always  must  be  required  to  accommodate 
himself,  if  he  is  to  continue  the  evolutionary  process  and 
grow  to  a  closer  unity  with  the  Creative  Mind.  This 
idea,  which  is  more  or  less  directly  stated  or  implied  in 
all  the  more  important  poems,  becomes  itself  the  theme 
of  one  of  the  most  charming  of  the  lighter  pieces — 
that  named  Melampus.  Melampus,  the  physician- 
naturalist  of  an  earlier  day,  becomes  in  Meredith's 
hands  a  type  of  those  who,  by  love  and  observation  of 
Earth's  younger  children,  spring  a  deep  source  of  wisdom 

212 


THE    POEMS— MAN  213 

applicable  to  the  most  far-reaching  problems  of  the 
life  of  man — 

For  him  the  woods  were  a  home  and  gave  him  the  key 

Of  knowledge,  thirst  for  their  treasures  in  herbs  and  flowers. 
The  secrets  held  by  the  creatures  nearer  than  we 

To  Earth  he  sought,  and  the  link  of  their  life  with  ours  : 
And  where  alike  we  are,  unlike  where,  and  the  veined 

Division,  veined  parallel,  of  a  blood  that  flows 
In  them,  in  us,  from  the  source  by  man  unattained 

Save  marks  he  well  what  the  mystical  woods  disclose. 

Here,  precisely,  is  the  question  before  us  in  this  chapter. 
We  have  followed  Meredith  through  his  identification 
of  Man  and  Nature  ;  but  we  have  not  yet  given  specific 
attention  to  his  conception  of  Man  himself,  to  his 
analysis  of  those  mental  and  moral  qualities  which  are 
peculiar  to  mankind ;  qualities  by  no  means  unnatural, 
still  less  antinatural ;  but  natural  in  a  wider  and 
more  comprehensive  sense,  and  possessed  by  man 
alone,  simply  because  he  has  risen  by  understanding 
to  a  height  which  the  animals  have  not  had  wits  to 
attain. 

The  leading  facts  of  human  life  as  Meredith  inter- 
prets it  are,  perhaps,  reducible  to  three.  First,  you 
have  the  animal  in  man  and  the  animal's  energies ;  that 
is,  you  have  man  in  that  condition  in  which  he  differs 
from  the  animal  mainly  in  that  he  has  a  mind  better 
equipped  to  get  for  him  what  his  body  wants.  Next, 
you  have  the  soul  and  the  soul's  activities  ;  that  is,  you 
have  man  in  that  condition  in  which  his  body  has  be- 
come merely  an  instrument  trained  to  follow  and  fulfil 
the  mind's  desires.  And,  last,  you  have  the  never- 
ceasing  process  by  which  the  animal  rises  to  the 
spiritual  man.  It  is  upon  this  process  that  Meredith 
keeps  his  eyes  continually  fixed.  What  are  the  prin- 
ciples, again  and  again  he  asks  himself,  by  which  man's 
actions  must  be  guided  if  he  is  to  reach  the  plenitude 


214  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

of  his  spiritual  stature?     His  first  task  clearly  is  to 

introduce  order  into  his  instincts ;  to  take  the  natural 

force,  the   pulse  of  life  within   him,   and   tune   it    for 

achievement  of   the   highest  purposes  of  which   it   is 

capable.     But  if  you  are  to  attune  this  force,  you  must 

preserve  it.     The  spiritual  life  can  be  built  only  upon 

a  basis  of  animal   energy ;    waste,  despise  it  at  your 

peril;  it  is  this  that  gives  you   the  bricks,  the  rough 

material,  without  which  there  is  no  edification.     The 

theme  is  one  upon  which  Meredith  is  never  tired  of 

harping.     Is    there,   he    asks,    the    east    wind    cutting 

through  him, 

Meaning  in  a  day 
When  this  fierce  angel  of  the  air, 
Intent  to  throw,  and  haply  slay, 
Can,  for  what  breath  of  life  we  bear, 
Exact  the  wrestle  ? 

And,  with  set  teeth,  he  replies : — 

Look  in  the  face  of  men  who  fare 

Lock-mouthed,  a  match  in  lungs  and  thews 

For  this  fierce  angel  of  the  air, 

To  twist  with  him  and  take  his  bruise. 

That  is  the  face  beloved  of  old 

Of  Earth,  young  Mother  of  her  brood  : 

Nor  broken  for  us  shows  the  mould 

When  muscle  is  in  mind  renewed.1 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  the  distinctive  quality 
of  Meredith's  poetical  work  depends  for  a  large  part  of 
its  value  on  the  incisiveness,  the  clean,  hard  hitting,  the 
invigoration,  the  grit,  which  are  to  be  associated  with  the 
emphasis  he  thus  lays  upon  the  need  for  a  firm  founda- 
tion of  vital  energy  to  be  the  driving  force,  the  horse- 
power, of  the  soul.  Vital  energy,  however,  is  in  itself 
quite  formless,  and  the  value  of  man's  life  depends  upon 
his  power  to  use  it  reasonably.     Achievement  is  im- 

1  Hard  Weather. 


THE    POEMS— MAN  215 

possible  except  through  muscle,  and  yet  mere  muscle  can 
play  no  part  at  all  in  the  evolution  of  man :  muscle 
must  be  united  to,  must  be  guided  by,  mind.  No  one 
who  has  so  much  as  glanced  at  any  work  of  Meredith's 
will  need  to  be  told  of  his  perpetual  insistence  upon 
the  saving  power  of  intellect,  reason,  of  "  the  sighting 
brain."  He  uses  the  word  Mind  almost  like  a  charm, 
and  it  seldom  fails  to  bring  beauty,  and  even  a  breath  of 
tenderness,  to  the  passages  in  which  he  consciously  gives 
it  its  full  meaning  : — 

Let  it  but  be  the  lord  of  Mind  to  guide 
Our  eyes.1 

Melting  she  passed  into  the  mind 
Where  immortal  with  mortal  weds.2 

Oh !  but  hear  it ;  'tis  the  mind.1 

It  were  well  that  we  should  not  let  that  breath  of  tender- 
ness escape  us  ;  for,  until  we  recognise  it,  we  can  find  no 
adequate  reply  to  those  who,  at  this  point,  will  insist 
against  us  that  Meredith's  view  of  life  gives  intellect  a 
preponderance  fatal  to  the  spirit  of  poetry.  It  is  un- 
deniable, indeed,  that  he  carries  his  brain-worship  too 

far— 

"Never,"  he  says,  "is  Earth  misread  by  brain."4 

a  statement  susceptible,  to  say  the  least,  of  sad  misin- 
terpretations. It  needs  to  be  remembered,  therefore, 
that  the  brain  he  worships  is  not  the  analytical  instru- 
ment that  "  peeps  and  botanises,"  it  is  the  power  of 
thought  strengthened  and,  as  it  were,  warmed  by  the 
pulsations  of  the  heart.  Those  same  pulsations  which, 
divorced  from  thought,  are  merely  animal,  united  to  it 
raise  it  to  a  power  to  which  the  word  Thought  remains 

1  Meditation  tinder  Stars.  l  The  South-  Wester. 

3  The  Woods  of  Westermain.  4  Hard  Weather. 


216  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

inadequate,  irradiating  it  with  the  deeper  glow  of  that 
spiritual  warmth  and  light,  to  meet  which  at  last  Love 
rises  like  a  flower  that  opens  to  the  sun. 

Love  born  of  knowledge,  love  that  gains 

Vitality  as  Earth  it  mates, 
The  meaning  of  the  Pleasures,  Pains, 

The  Life,  the  Death,  illuminates.1 

It  is  this  kind  of  irradiated  thought  to  which  it  will 
be  found  Meredith's  worship  is,  in  the  last  resort,  always 
directed  :  thought,  that  is,  fused  with  emotion,  and  in 
this  state  of  fusion  termed  reason  or  soul  or  spirit, 
everywhere  recognisable  by  the  harmonious  nature  of 
the  action  in  which  it  is  expressed. 

Man's  action  as  we  know  it  is  seldom  thus  harmonious, 
only  intermittently  does  it  express  the  spirit.  Therefore 
Meredith  devotes  the  best  part  of  his  activity  to  dis- 
covering and  explaining  the  principles  by  which  it  is  to 
be  spiritualised.  The  idea  of  harmony,  applied  to  social 
life,  passes  at  once  into  the  idea  of  fellowship.  The  life 
of  the  spirit  is  thus  essentially  the  life  that  holds  men 
together ;  and  opposed  to  this  the  life  described  above 
as  the  animal  life,  the  life  of  the  senses,  is  the  life  which 
holds  men  apart.  The  true  function  of  the  senses  is  to 
put  you  in  touch  with  a  world  outside  yourself,  a  world 
which  you  share  with  mankind.  But  if,  misunderstanding 
their  intention,  you  value  not  the  object  revealed  by 
them,  but  the  feeling  which  accompanies  the  revelation, 
you  are  identifying  yourself  with  something  which  be- 
longs to  yourself  alone,  and  the  spiritual  life,  the  life  of 
fellowship,  is  shut  out.  You  are  a  prisoner,  and  your 
own  senses  have  imprisoned  you.  Narrowness,  confine- 
ment, is  the  essence  of  the  sensual  life,  and  to  this 
Meredith  traces  it,  as  well  in  its  most  obvious,  as  in  its 

1    The  Thrush  in  February^ 


THE   POEMS— MAN  217 

most  subtle  forms,  including  all  in    the   one   idea   of 

"  selfishness." 

But  that  the  senses  still 

Usurp  the  station  of  their  issue  Mind, 

He  would  have  burst  the  chrysalis  of  the  blind  : 

As  yet  he  will ; 

As  yet  he  will,  she  prays, 

Yet  will,  when  his  distempered  devil  of  Self; — 

The  glutton  for  her  fruits,  the  wily  elf 

In  shifting  rays  ; — 

That  captain  of  the  scorned  ; 
The  coveter  of  life  in  soul  and  shell, 
The  fratricide,  the  thief,  the  infidel, 
The  hoofed  and  horned  ; — * 

only  when  this  distempered  devil  is  cast  out  of  him, 

can   he   burst   from    the   chrysalis   and    be   free.     The 

natural  function  of  the  senses,  then,  is  to  be  roads  by 

which  the  mind  may  travel  towards  the  attainment  of 

truth.     The  danger  is  that  they  may  get  converted  into 

mere  conduits  of  pleasure.     Thus  converted  they  fly  in 

the  face  of  Nature,  and  Nature's  retribution  follows  in 

due  course.     You  have  asked  Pleasure  of  an  instrument 

not,  in  the  main,  planned  to  give  it  you  :  you  get,  what 

you  least  wanted,  Pain.     At  least,  that  is  how  it  works 

out  in  the  long  run.     For  the  individual  who  aims  at 

securing   private   satisfaction   is  aiming  at  something 

which  it  is  no  interest  of  Nature's  that  he  should  have. 

Her  whip  descends  upon  him,  causing  in  him   much 

horror  at  Nature's  cruelty,  much  pity  for  himself;  and 

at  times  he  will  fly  for  refuge  to  the  defences  of  the 

cynic  or  the  sentimentalist.     Only,  let  wisdom  lie  but  a 

little  deeper  in  him  than  the  skin,  and   the  recurring 

stroke  points  him  at  last  to  the  fundamental  error,  and 

teaches  him  to  change  his  aim. 

So  flesh 
Conjures  tempest-flails  to  thresh 
Good  from  worthless.2 

1  Earth  and  Man.  2  The  Woods  of  Westermain. 


218  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

As  the  social  and  intellectual  life  develops  and  grows 
more  complicated,  more  subtle,  the  same  error  is  liable 
to  recur,  cropping  up  to  suit  the  subtler  environment, 
in  subtler,  more  elusive  forms.     To  meet  and  counteract 
them  a  subtler  corrective  is  required.     Nature,  express- 
ing  herself    now    in    the    developed    consciousness   of 
society,  rebukes  the  offender  with   a  touch  from   the 
gentlest,  yet  keenest,  most  searching  of  her  weapons — 
she   smiles.     It  is  a  touch  only;  but  woe  betide  him 
if  he  is  too  dense  to  be  aware  of  it.     The  touch  is  a 
reminder,  the  smile  a  smile  of  security.     Attention  is 
called    to   an   amusing   discrepancy   between    facts   as 
he  sees  them  and  the  facts  as  they  are.     More  than 
a  suggestion  is  not  necessary;  for  the  true  fact  needs 
no  championing,  it  can  be  trusted  to  assert  itself  in  due 
time.     Meanwhile,  if  he  is  wise,  he  takes  the  smile  for 
his  punishment,  and  avoids  the  more  disastrous  school- 
ing   which    waits    for    those    who    disregard    it.     The 
discovery,  analysis,  revelation  of  the  idealist  impulse  in 
Comedy,  is    probably  one  of   the   most  characteristic 
of  Meredith's  achievements.     Man,  he  suggests,  having 
risen  from  the  animal,  has  a  certain  innate  tendency  to 
revert  to  ancestral  impulses.     The  objection  to  these 
impulses  as  they  assert  themselves  in  man  is  that  they 
are  out  of  date.     In  their  day  they  were  of  value,  went 
side  by  side  with  a  certain  unconscious  upward  striving; 
but  their  value  is  at  a  discount  now,  because  man's 
striving,  grown  more  conscious,  is  directed  to  ends  in 
which  they  have  no  longer  a  place.     The  consciousness 
of  these  ends  is  become  no  less  innate  than  the  tendency 
to  animal  reversions.     And  in  the  conflict  between  the 
two  a  further  tendency  is  developed,  the  tendency  to 
cover  the  animal  impulse  under  a  consecrating  name. 
This  tendency — apt  as  we  are  to  be  blind  to  it  in  our- 
selves— we  are  much  on  the  look  out  for  in  others,  and 


THE   POEMS— MAN  219 

when  we  see  them  indulging  in  it,  we  laugh.  So  very 
sure  are  they  of  their  reward,  so  wholly  incapable  of 
deceiving  nature  even  if  they  deceive  themselves,  there 
can  be  no  occasion  to  take  their  posturing  seriously. 
And  as  it  is  their  aim  to  be  taken  seriously,  to  impose 
on  others  as  upon  themselves,  the  clear-sighted  smile  of 
the  Comic  Spirit  cuts  like  steel. 

Sword  of  Common  Sense  ! — 

Our  surest  gift :  the  sacred  chain 

Of  man  to  man  .  .  . 

Thou  guardian  issue  of  the  harvest  brain  !  .  .  . 

Bright,  nimble  of  the  marrow-nerve 

To  wield  thy  double  edge,  retort 

Or  hold  the  deadlier  reserve, 

And  through  thy  victim's  weapon  sting  : 

Thine  is  the  service,  thine  the  sport 

This  shifty  heart  of  ours  to  hunt 

Across  its  webs  and  round  the  many  a  ring 

Where  fox  it  is,  or  snake.  .  .  . 

Once  lion  of  our  desert's  trodden  weeds  ; 

And,  but  for  thy  straight  figure  at  the  yoke, 

Again  to  be  the  lordly  paw, 

Naming  his  appetites  his  needs 

Behind  a  decorative  cloak.1 

With  the  increasing  complication  of  society  the 
animal  reversions,  like  hunted  foxes,  increase  in 
wariness  and  cunning  ;  and  the  Comic  Spirit,  to  be  even 
with  them,  puts  a  finer  edge  upon  his  tools  and  has 
recourse  to  a  higher  delicacy  of  handling.  But  he 
stands  from  first  to  last  for  intellect  in  view  of  truth,  in 
view,  that  is,  of  the  object  that  brings  men's  minds 
together,  watching  their  aberrations,  secure  of  conquest, 
content  to  recall  them  to  the  straight  track  with  a  smile. 
It  will  be  seen  that  Meredith's  theory  of  the  uses  of 
the  Comic  Spirit  is  an  outcome  of  his  brain-worship, 
his  belief  in  the  unifying  power  of  intellect.  Applied 
to  practice,  the  theory  seems  to  have  this  hitch  in  it, 

1  Ode  to  the  Comic  Spirit. 


220  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

that  almost  as  much  brains  are  required  to  see  a  joke 
as  to  make  one,  and  that,  as  a  rule,  those  who  most  need 
schooling  under  the  Comic  muse  are  the  least  susceptible 
of  her  methods.  Of  course,  one  of  the  funniest  things 
in  the  world  is  to  see  fun  itself  miss  fire — as  when 
Mr.  Le  Gallienne  narrowly  misses  being  converted 
by  the  last  stanza  of  Jump-to-Glory  Jane — yet  it  is 
hard  to  see  where  the  practical  value  of  this  kind  of 
fun  comes  in  :  there  may  even  be  something  a  little 
comic  in  expecting  comedy  to  be  so  practical.  And 
perhaps  of  intellect,  as  of  comedy,  it  may  be  said  truly, 
that  it  ought  to  exercise  more  influence  than  it  does ; 
more  influential  it  undoubtedly  would  be,  if  there  were 
more  of  it,  if  it  were  more  a  force  that  could  be  counted 
on.  And  Meredith's  view  is,  that  the  chief  hope  for  the 
future  lies  in  making  more  of  it.  His  firm  belief  in 
intellect  as  a  reconciling  influence,  tending  to  harmony 
between  man  and  man,  is  perhaps  the  most  interesting, 
most  significant  aspect  of  his  practical  attitude  to  life. 
His  own  social  creed,  his  enthusiastic  Liberalism,  his 
sense  of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  his  faith  in  progress, 
his  denial  of  any  possibility  of  progress  without  a  broad 
foundation  laid  for  it  in  the  aspirations  of  the  masses 
of  the  people — these,  and  his  other  ruling  sympathies, 
he  has  himself  reached  by  an  intellectual  process,  and  his 
aim  has  been  to  inspire  others  to  repeat  that  process 

Till  brain-rule  splendidly  towers.1 

We  are  prone  to  think  of  the  democratic  creed  as 
springing  primarily  from  the  heart,  to  regard  ideals  of 
brotherhood  as  the  offspring  of  love  rather  than  of  logic. 
Meredith  lays  all  his  emphasis  on  the  other  side  of  the 
matter.  Man  cannot  determine,  by  impulse,  what  the 
line  of  his  advance  shall  be :  all  movement  is  not  for- 

1  The  Empty  Purse. 


THE   POEMS— MAN  221 

ward  movement,  however  generous  the  intentions  guid- 
ing it.  There  is  only  one  road  along  which  true  progress 
can  be  made.  Man's  problem  is  to  find  it.  It  is  an 
intellectual  problem.  And  truth  being  the  same  for  all, 
and  the  ideal  of  manhood,  the  complete  development 
and  triumphant  expression  by  man  of  all  that  he  has 
it  in  him  to  become,  being  realisable  only  when  this  uni- 
versality is  understood  and  acted  on,  the  more  numerous 
the  seekers,  the  greater  the  likelihood  of  their  discover- 
ing the  right  course  and  making  an  appreciable 
headway.  The  isolated  thinker,  even  if  he  rightly 
divined  it,  could  have  no  power  to  advance.  The  hope 
of  the  present  age,  in  Meredith's  eyes,  is  that  for  the 
first  time  in  history  the  voice  of  the  people  is  making 
itself  heard,  that  the  life-force  of  the  people  has  ap- 
peared at  last  as  the  chief  factor  to  be  reckoned  with 
by  those  whose  work  it  is  to  forecast  the  future  of  the 
race. 

Thus  Meredith,  by  an  intellectual  process,  comes  to 
a  result  which  the  majority  of  those  who  reach  it  reach 
more  intuitively.  The  unity  of  man,  arising  from  a 
common  relationship  to  the  Creative  Spirit,  in  whom 
he  "  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being,"  was  perceived 
two  thousand  years  ago  and  became  the  inspiration  of 
a  life,  immortal  in  human  memory  as  the  truth  it  mani- 
fested. By  an  intellectual  process,  Meredith  arrives  at  the 
Christian  principle  of  universal  fellowship  and  endorses 
it.  Such  intellectual  endorsement  can  never  be  super- 
fluous. Yet  it  is  a  question  whether  a  vital  principle  of 
this  kind  can  remain  wholly  independent  of  the  process 
by  which  it  is  arrived  at ;  at  the  least,  it  seems  that 
Meredith's  method  of  approach  to  it  has  given  him  a 
certain  prejudice  in  his  presentment  of  it  to  the  world. 
The  stress  he  lays  upon  the  need  for  a  unified  nature — 
blood,  brain,  spirit,  working  harmoniously — is   hardly 


222  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

sufficient  to  carry  or  to  justify  the  degree  of  insistence 
with  which  he  speaks  of  the  moral  claims  of  the  in- 
tellect. Human  nature,  he  says,  ideally  is  one :  its  parts 
have  not  their  true  character  except  as  unified  one  with 
another ;  and  undoubtedly  the  force  of  Meredith's  moral 
teaching  is  mainly  due  to  his  recognition  of  this  truth, 
or  rather  to  his  unrivalled  power  of  tracing  and  reveal- 
ing the  various  forms  in  which  it  manifests  itself  in  the 
wide  field  of  human  conduct.  True  human  action, 
whatever  the  sphere  in  which  it  is  to  operate,  is  the 
action  of  the  fully  developed,  the  naturally  balanced 
man  :  to  Meredith,  this  is  not  theory,  but  a  fact  which 
the  whole  of  his  observation  is  summoned  to  endorse. 
This  perfect,  complete,  unified  action  he  calls  reasonable, 
spiritual.  It  is  the  ideal.  But  in  his  analysis  of  it,  and 
in  his  descriptions  of  the  method  by  which  a  man  may 
attain  to  it,  a  certain  fundamental  fact  seems  either  to 
elude  or,  at  the  least,  to  occupy  too  little  of  his  attention. 
He  speaks  of  the  forces  of  body  and  mind,  of  sense 
and  intellect,  not  only  as  being — what  undoubtedly  they 
are  when  viewed  thus  in  the  abstract — elements  of 
antagonism  ;  but  as  if  they  exhausted  between  them 
the  elements  into  which  the  action  of  the  still  imperfect 
man  is  reducible.  The  more  popular  analysis  includes, 
from  the  first,  another  element,  which  we  may  call  the 
element  of  emotion.  And  there  seems  to  be  a  reason  for 
thus  including  and  recognising  it,  from  the  first,  as  a 
disparate  element,  co-ordinate  with  sense  and  intellect ; 
for,  from  the  first,  it  puts  us  in  possession  of  a  principle 
showing  recognisable  affinities  with  each  of  the  other 
more  obviously  antagonistic  elements.1    If  normal  human 

1  I  am  not  unaware  that  Meredith  speaks  often  of  a  triad  of  elements. 

Blood  and  brain  and  spirit,  three, 
Say  the  deepest  gnomes  of  earth, 
Join  for  true  felicity. 

But     where     is     the     distinction    between     the    third    member    of    the 


THE   POEMS— MAN  223 

nature  were  indeed  rightly  analysable  into  mere  blood 
and  brain,  it  is  impossible  to  see  how  there  should  ever 
be  cessation  of  the  war  between  them — in  which  one  of 
the  two  might  well  be  victorious,  yet  without  overcoming 
their  essential  antagonism  or  securing  a  true  unity. 
And  Meredith,  while  he  never  wearies  of  inculcating 
unity,  the  harmonious  nature,  as  the  test  of  spiritual 
achievement,  seems  to  acknowledge  no  neutral  ground 
to  which  he  can  point  the  combatants  for  adjustment 
of  their  differences.  For  the  irradiated  thought  we 
spoke  of  earlier  appears  in  his  system  as  the  result  of 
victory,  whereas  what  we  need  is  a  light  to  fall  upon 
the  battlefield,  a  suspension  of  hostilities  in  which  the 
enemies  may  have  view  of  their  common  humanity. 
Just  such  a  light,  just  such  a  neutral  ground  the  emo- 
tional nature  can  supply,  ground  rightly  to  be  called 
neutral  because  raised  above  the  scene  of  conflict. 
There  are  all  kinds  of  emotion — good,  bad,  and  in- 
different— as  there  are  all  kinds  of  thought.  But  just 
as  the  last  fact  about  the  thinking  nature,  the  begin- 
ning and  the  end  of  thought,  is  its  power  to  put  the 
mind  in  touch  with  the  real  and  the  true,  so,  of  the 
emotional  nature  (in  spite  of  all  its  pitfalls),  the  last  fact 
about  it  is  its  power  to  place  Truth  itself  before  the 
soul  as  a  kindred  element,  as  something  which,  how- 
ever vaguely  apprehended  in  its  separate  manifesta- 
tions, is,  by  its  natural  affinity  with  man's  nature, 
everywhere  trusted  and  desired.  To  reach  it,  to  realise 
in  conscious  life  and  action  his  unity  with  the  Spirit  of 
Truth,  this,  man's  fundamental  impulse,  the  root  of  his 
emotional  nature,  provides  his  life — however  crudely 
manifested — with  the  germ  of  a  spiritual  principle  from 

triad,   called    "spirit,"   and   the   union   of   the   three,   called   "spirit," 
also  ? 


224  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

the  first,  and,  long  before  the  battle  between  sense  and 
intellect  is  fought  out,  wakens  in  him  a  desire  for  unity 
with  his  fellows  and  gives  him  a  foretaste  of  that 
inward  spiritual  unity,  which  is  the  perfected  man.  I 
should  have  forborne  to  venture  upon  this  criticism, 
except  for  the  fact  that  Meredith,  coming  to  the  demo- 
cratic principle  as  the  climax  of  his  system,  seems 
almost  to  challenge  comparison  with  the  established 
religion  of  democracy.  You  are  to  view  the  individual 
as  a  unit  in  the  human  family.  To  develop  and  maintain 
so  vast  a  family  connection  would  be  impossible  without 
delicatest  mechanical  interplay  ;  and  for  machinery  you 
must  have  wits.  It  is  impossible  to  insist  too  strenu- 
ously upon  the  need  of  them,  provided  it  remains  clear 
that  there  is  a  still  deeper  need  implied.  For  the  de- 
velopment of  the  idea  of  unity,  and  conscious  progress 
towards  the  realisation  of  it  in  practice,  are  unattainable, 
unless  the  desire  for  it  is  an  essential  part  of  human 
nature.  Here,  surely,  is  the  ultimate  fact.  And  it  is 
the  strength  of  Christianity  that  it  takes  its  stand  upon 
the  universality  of  that  desire. 

It  would  have  been  absurd,  where  space  is  limited,  to 
have  spent  so  disproportionate  an  amount  of  it  to  a  nega- 
tive result,  were  it  not  that  the  student  of  human  nature 
may  turn  to  other  chapters  of  this  book  and  find  ample 
exposition  of  Meredith's  detailed  treatment  of  it  in  the 
novels.  Only  the  briefest  survey  of  its  main  outlines  has 
been  possible  in  this.  But,  in  conclusion,  it  seems  desir- 
able to  deal  with  a  charge  which  has  been  laid  against 
Meredith's  conception  of  human  life  in  its  relation  to 
poetry  and  of  the  part  in  which  the  poetic  impulse  has 
to  play  in  human  life.  Meredith's  so-called  poetic 
vision  amounts,  we  are  told,  merely  to  this ;  that  facts 
are  facts,  and  that  man  possesses  no  higher  faculty  than 
the  common  sense  that  perceives  and  confesses  them  to 


THE   POEMS— MAN  225 

be  so.  In  a  very  noble  poem,  the  Ode  to  Youth  in 
Memory,  Meredith  himself  admits  the  charge  : — 

"This,"  he  says,  "the  truistic  rubbish  under  heel 
Of  all  the  world,  we  peck  at  and  are  filled." 

and  the  object  of  the  Ode,  as  a  whole,  is  to  comment 
upon  one  aspect  of  the  universal  gospel  of  fact,  fact  as 
it  must  appear  to  those  for  whom  the  greater  part  of 
their  life  lies  behind  them.  In  what  spirit,  Meredith 
asks,  will  the  wise  man,  when  he  is  old,  look  back  upon 
the  tireless,  the  impulsive  days  of  youth? 

Days,  when  the  ball  of  our  vision 
Had  eagles  that  flew  unabashed  to  sun  ; 
When  the  grasp  on  the  bow  was  decision, 
And  arrow  and  hand  and  eye  were  one. 

Will  he  try  to  turn  his  age  into  a  spoiled  copy  of  them  ? 

Will  he  still  be  harking  back  to  the  memory  of  what  is 

lost,  striving  to  flap  wings  and  soar  in  the  old  ecstasy 

of  freedom  ?    If  so,  he  has  that  in  him  which  will  remind 

him  "  facts  are  facts."     „,.    .    ,  , 

This  is  decreed 

For  age  that  would  to  youthful  heavens  ascend, 

By  passion  for  the  arms'  possession  tossed  ; 

It  falls  the  way  of  sighs  and  hath  their  end  ; 

A  spark  gone  out  to  more  sepulchral  night. 

Good  if  the  arrowy  eagle  of  the  height 

Be  then  the  little  bird  that  hops  to  feed. 

Then,  in  one  of  the  boldest  and  happiest  of  his  similes, 

he   pictures   the  old  as    time-worn  willows  stationary 

beside  the  stream  of  life. 

They  now  bared  roots  beside  the  river  bent ; 

Whose  privilege  themselves  to  see  ; 

Their  place  in  yonder  tideway  know  ; 

The  current  glass  peruse  ; 

The  depths  intently  sound  ; 

And,  sapped  by  each  returning  flood, 

Accept  for  monitory  punishment 

Those  worn,  roped  features  under  crust  of  mud, 

Reflected  in  the  silvery  smooth  around  : 

Not  less  the  branching  and  high  singing  tree, 

A  home  of  nests,  a  landmark  and  a  tent, 

Until  their  hour  of  losing  hold  on  ground. 


226  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

Over  and  above  the  beauty  and  exquisite  appropriate- 
ness of  its  imagery,  there  is  a  measured  and  lofty 
eloquence  in  this  passage,  which  might  of  itself  enable 
the  reader  to  see  something  of  a  new  light  dawning 
behind  the  supposed  matter-of-factness  of  the  world  to 
which  Meredith  would  introduce  him.  For,  after  all, 
there  is  no  reason  why  poetry  should  suffer  for  recog- 
nising facts ;  the  poet,  if  he  will,  may  call  his  spade  a 
spade ;  provided,  that  is,  he  has  a  plot  of  ground  worth 
digging  in — and  if  he  has  not,  it  matters  little  what  he 
calls  it.  What  sort  of  a  life  is  it  to  which  he  makes  his 
facts  contribute  ?  Can  he  so  speak  of  the  facts  and  the 
life  together  as  to  make  them  poetically  real  ?  That  is 
all  we  need  to  ask  of  him. 

But  to  return  to  Youth  in  Memory.  The  problem 
set  by  Earth  to  Age  for  its  solution  is  the  accurate 
adjustment  of  desire  to  the  continually  decreasing 
possibilities  of  fulfilling  it. 

Who  cheerfully  the  little  bird  becomes, 
Without  a  fall,  and  pipes  for  peck  at  crumbs, 
May  have  her  dolings  to  the  lightest  touch. 

Nor  is  it  common  sense  alone  that  requires  this  acqui- 
escence :  poetry,  if  age  shall  have  its  poetry,  requires 
it  also.     Those 

cravings  for  an  eagle's  flight, 

To  top  white  peaks  and  serve  wild  wine 

Among  the  rosy  undecayed, 

Bring  only  flash  of  shade 

From  her  full  throbbing  breast  of  day  in  night. 

By  what  they  crave  are  they  betrayed. 

But  the  poetry  of  age,  if  it  asks  acquiescence  in  failing 
powers,  asks  something  more  ;  a  merely  negative  atti- 
tude is  not  enough.  There  must  also  be  a  positive 
attitude  to  life  and  to  the  joy  of  life.  Age,  then,  draws 
its  inspiration  from  the  faculty  it  has  of  living  anew  by 
sympathy  in  the  life  of  the  young.     And  to  attain  this 


THE   POEMS— MAN  227 

sympathy  and  make  it  serviceable,  its  first  necessity  is 
to  have  accepted  the  whole  of  its  experience,  to  have 
looked  without  flinching  at  the  lessons  of  its  past — 

To  feel  that  heaven  must  we  that  hell  sound  through. 

Rightly  to  understand  the  book  of  memory,  we  must 
leave  no  page  of  it  unread.  Among  the  rest,  there  will 
be  pages  that  it  will  be  an  act  almost  of  heroism  not  to 
skip.  Skip  them,  and  the  whole  turns  to  a  meaning- 
less farrago  of  sentiment  and  self-indulgence.  Read 
them,  accept  whatever  they  have  to  record  of  error  or 
of  disgrace,  and  memory  becomes  a  living  possession, 
a  principle  of  wisdom  fitted  to  inspire  and  guide  the 
future,  and  in  the  present  a  true  sifter  of  grain  from 

chaff. 

Solidity  and  bulk  and  martial  brass, 

Once  tyrants  of  the  senses,  faintly  score 

A  mark  on  pebbled  sand  or  fluid  slime  ; 

But  present  in  the  spirit,  vital  there, 

Are  things  that  seemed  the  phantoms  of  their  time — 

Eternal  as  the  recurrent  cloud,  as  air 

Imperative,  refreshful  as  dawn  dew.  .  .  . 

True  of  the  man,  and  of  mankind  'tis  true. 

Did  we  stout  battle  with  the  shade,  Despair, 

Our  cowardice,  it  blooms  ;  or  haply  warred 

Against  the  primal  beast  in  us,  and  flung  ; 

Or  cleaving  mists  of  Sorrow,  left  it  starred 

Above  self-pity  slain  ;  or  it  was  Prayer 

First  taken  for  Life's  cleanser  ;  or  the  tongue 

Spake  for  the  world  against  this  heart ;  or  rings 

Old  laughter,  from  the  founts  of  wisdom  sprung; 

Or  clap  of  wing  of  joy,  that  was  a  throb 

From  breast  of  Earth,  and  did  no  creature  rob  ; 

These  quickening  live.     But  deepest  at  her  springs^ 

Most  filial,  is  an  eye  to  love  her  young. 

And  this  is  the  final  test.  For  only  that  Age  is  truly 
sane  and  sweet  which,  loving  life  and  Earth  the  source 
of  life,  recognises  that  there  is  a  time  approaching  when, 
without  regret,  the  torch  must  be  passed  on  to  other 
bearers.     As  the  Earth-given  life  nears  its  conclusion, 


228  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

the  temptation  will  increase  to  regard  death  as  the 
threshold  of  a  life  to  be  renewed  elsewhere.  Meredith 
thinks  that  experience  gives  no  warrant  for  such  a 
belief.  The  last  word  for  Age,  as  in  a  different  sense 
for  Youth  also,  is  self-effacement ;  and  the  life  that  has 
been  lived  truly  will  not  pass  utterly  away ;  it  will 
remain  as  an  inspiring  memory  to  those  that  come  after 
it.  And  this  is  a  true  immortality ;  for  to  live  in  Love's 
memory  is  to  live  indeed. 

With  us  for  guides, 
Another  step  above  the  animal, 
To  views  in  Alpine  thought  are  they  helped  on. 
Good  if  so  far  we  live  in  them  when  gone  ! 

The  Ode  to  Youth  in  Memory  is  thus  a  singularly 
characteristic  product  of  Meredith's  poetic  genius. 
Poetry,  he  everywhere  says,  is  not  dreams  and  vague 
desires  ;  poetry  is  truth  ;  it  is  desire  accepting  necessity, 
and  by  acceptance  transforming  it.  And  he  says  here, 
it  is  not  merely  life  at  overflow  that  makes  poetry ; 
age  has  it  still ;  poetry  may  be  the  final  word  of  life 
as  it  departs.  It  is  his  achievement  in  the  Ode  to 
Youth  in  Memory  to  have  shown  how  this  may  be. 
He  looks  calmly  upon  Death  and  along  the  road  to 
Death,  and  shows  that  to  the  last  step  flowers  still 
spring  on  either  side. 

Life  fails,  then  :  Age  is  Age  :  but  for  Age,  as  for 
Youth  also,  there  is  still  one  gospel  only — the  gospel 
that  facts  are  facts.  Wishing  cannot  change  them. 
Life  would  be  but  a  poor  cloud  castle  if  it  could.  Yet, 
if  the  world  we  live  in  be  indeed  bounded 

by  the  high 
Uno'erleapcd  mountains  of  necessity, 

the  rule  to  which  we  are  subject  is  no  iron  despot's 
rule.  It  is  true  that,  if  we  attempt  to  throw  our  wills 
against  it,  the  force  of  our  rebellion  recoils  upon  our 


THE    POEMS— MAN  229 

head,  and  we  are  ground  down.  But,  if  we  will,  we  may 
devote  our  minds  to  understanding  it ;  we  have  the 
power  to  make  of  ourselves  instruments  working  con- 
sciously in  its  service.  It  is  those  who  recognise  this 
power  and  use  it,  who  hold  the  secret  of  all  human  pro- 
gress ;  they  are  the  guardians  of  the  future,  the  only 
true  prophets  of  what  the  future  holds  in  store.  Theirs 
is  the  true  vision,  be  they  young  or  old  ;  the  vision  for 
which  life  attains  to  truth  as  it  attains  to  poetry,  poetry 
being  the  final  expression  of  man's  joy  in  the  harmoni- 
ous laws  of  life. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

THE  POEMS.     MEREDITH  AS  ARTIST  AND 
CRAFTSMAN 

IT  is  generally  accounted  bad  criticism  to  treat  a 
poet's  subject-matter  as  separable  from  his  manner 
of  presenting  it.  Such  a  treatment,  however,  provided 
it  makes  no  claim  to  be  taken  for  criticism  of  the  com- 
pleted work,  is  perfectly  justifiable  :  nor  could  any  right 
estimate  of  the  work  of  the  greatest  poets  be  obtained, 
unless  it  were  possible  to  consider  the  content  of  their 
poetry  in  abstraction  from  its  form.  In  poetry  the 
form  and  the  content  are  indissolubly  united  ;  but  to 
assert  this  unity  is  something  quite  different  from 
asserting  that  a  poem  is  always  to  be  looked  at  in  both 
aspects  at  once.  Nothing,  for  example,  could  be 
simpler  than  to  abstract  from  such  a  poem  as  the 
Rubaiyat  of  Omar  Khayyam  the  philosophic  theory 
of  life  which  it  expresses ;  a  part  of  the  writer's  aim 
was  to  give  expression  to  such  a  theory  ;  and  it  must  be 
a  part  of  every  reader's  to  understand  it  and  estimate 
its  value.  But  the  inadequacy  of  the  theory,  if  it  be 
found  inadequate,  will  only  bear  remotely  on  the  ques- 
tion (which  is  indeed  no  question)  of  the  excellence  of 
the  Rubaiyat  as  a  work  of  art ;  and  this  will  call  for 
separate  assessment.  It  is  particularly  necessary  in 
Meredith's  case  to  abstract  the  matter  of  his  poetry 
from  the  form  ;  for  the  ideas  of  which  the  matter  is 

230 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  cV  CRAFTSMAN   231 

constituted,  though  the  world  is  fast  growing  familiar 
with  thern,  are  still,  on  the  whole,  strange.  Now,  a  poet 
who  is  also  an  original  thinker  is  an  uncommon  pheno- 
menon. A  poet  is  generally  content  to  reflect  the 
thoughts  of  others  ;  the  very  fact  that  others  share  his 
thought  gives  life  and  enthusiasm  to  his  apprehension 
of  it,  and  enables  the  thought  to  flow  from  him  in  a 
form  in  which  its  life  is  naturally  preserved.  And  thus 
it  comes  about  that,  in  approaching  poetry,  we  custom- 
arily pay  more  attention  to  the  form  than  to  the  ideas, 
as  though  hardly  expecting  the  ideas  to  be  other  than 
we  could  have  ourselves  supplied.  Meredith,  however, 
twenty,  thirty,  and  forty  years  ago,  sought  to  give 
poetical  expression  to  ideas  which  are  only  now  dawn- 
ing upon  the  general  consciousness,  and  which  will 
only  be  common  property  twenty,  thirty,  forty  years  to 
come.  And  therefore  the  task  of  the  aesthetic  critic, 
the  task  of  determining  how  far  he  has  succeeded  in 
finding  a  living  expression  for  those  ideas,  is  only  to  be 
undertaken  upon  a  basis  of  familiarity  with  those  ideas 
themselves  and  a  complete  understanding  of  them. 
Just  because  in  true  poetry  form  and  content  are  indis- 
solubly  united,  it  is  impossible,  while  we  remain  in 
ignorance  of  the  exact  nature  and  bearing  of  the  con- 
tent, to  pass  any  final  judgment  upon  the  form  or  to 
decide  whether  the  required  unity  has  been  achieved. 
Thus  it  has  been  no  inversion  of  the  true  order  of 
things  to  begin  by  asking  attention  to  the  ideas  ex- 
pressed by  Meredith  in  his  poetry,  and  only  now  pro- 
ceed to  consider  what  is  the  intrinsic  merit  of  the  poems 
themselves.  For,  rightly  understood,  this  second  and 
final  consideration  implies  the  first. 

But  here,  at  the  very  outset  of  our  last  endeavour,  we 
are  called  upon  to  deal  with  a  formidable  difficulty,  to 
face  the  question  whether  our  author  is  entitled  to  take 


232  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

rank  as  a  poet  at  all.     "  Is  he  accepted  of  Song  ? "    The 
question  has  been  asked  so  frequently  that  the  attempt 
to  blink  it  would  be  an  affectation.     But  there  is  a  class 
of  questions  to  which — provided  you  make  it  clear  to 
those  who  put   them    that   they  have    reached   you — 
silence  is  the  best  reply.   Thus,  in  regard  to  the  formid- 
able question  just  referred  to,  we  may  point  out  that 
these  chapters  presuppose  it  answered,  and   answered 
not  in  word  but  in  deed.     Meredith  has  won  his  place 
among  the  great  poets  of  our  literature ;  and  we  may 
content  ourselves  here  with  the  remark  that  his  writing 
was,  from  the  first,  seen  to  possess  certain  characteristics 
which  mark  the  poet  born.     When  first  he  introduced 
himself  to  the  world  with  a  small  volume  of  verses,  his 
work  was  at  once  pronounced  by  eminent  critics  to  be 
simple,    sensuous,    and    passionate :    they    turned    to 
Herrick,  Keats,  and    Tennyson    for   a   parallel    to    it. 
Meredith  and  Tennyson  !  but,  above  all,  Meredith  and 
Keats  !     The  very  idea,  the  mere  memory  of  such  a 
comparison,    takes   the    breath    away.      But    in    185 1 
Mr.   W.   M.   Rossetti    thought  well  to   devote   several 
paragraphs    to  the  exposition   of  differences  between 
them.    The  fact  is  significant,  and  there  is  this  inference 
to  be  drawn  from  it — that  Meredith's  maturer  manner 
presupposes  the  existence  in  its  author  of  powers  which, 
because  he  has  not  wished  them  to  be  conspicuous,  he 
has  been  supposed  not  to  possess. 

Reverting  now  to  these  early  lyrics,  and  comparing 
them  with  better-known  examples  of  Meredith's  mature 
work,  we  should  be  tempted  to  say  that  there  was  less 
of  poetry  in  the  work  than  in  the  man.  His  first  themes 
were  of  a  comparatively  trifling  nature,  and  he  failed,  as 
Charles  Kingsley  pointed  out,  to  give  them  the  necessary 
perfection  of  form.  "  If  the  hounds  are  running  hard, 
it  is  no  shame  to  any  man  to  smash  a  gate  instead 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  &  CRAFTSMAN   233 

of  clearing  it ;  forward  he  must  get,  by  fair  means  if 
possible,  if  not,  by  foul.  But  if,  like  the  idyllist,  any 
gentleman  "  larks  "  his  horse  over  supererogatory  leaps 
at  the  cover-side,  he  is  not  allowed  to  knock  all  four 
hoofs  against  the  top-bar."  There  are  not  a  few  of 
Meredith's  later  pieces,  before  which  the  suspicion  is 
aroused,  in  the  minds  of  even  his  most  enthusiastic 
admirers,  that  it  was,  from  the  artistic  point  of  view,  a 
work  of  supererogation  on  his  part  to  write  them.  There 
is  The  Empty  Purse — the  supererogatory  nature  of 
which  he  has  himself  affirmed — and  one  or  two  other 
moral  pieces  and  disturbing  moral  passages  are  to  be 
placed  in  the  same  class  with  it ;  on  the  other  hand,  and 
more  to  our  immediate  purpose,  there  is  Phaethon, 
written  in  the  Galliambic  measure,  and  presented  to  the 
public  as  "  one  of  those  exercises  of  the  writer,  which 
readers  may  be  invited  to  share,"  in  face  of  which 
admission  it  becomes  pertinent  to  ask  how  many  of  the 
poems  are  to  be  classed  among  such  exercises  ;  or  there 
is  Phoebus  with  Admetus,  not  admittedly  a  metrical 
exercise,  and  yet,  for  all  its  charm,  infected  with  a  trace 
of  the  artificiality  of  practised  craftsmanship  or,  shall  we 
say  ?  of  the  craftsman  practising.  The  finished  product 
has  a  hundred  beauties,  a  rare  naivete  of  idea  most 
delicately  dovetailed  into  harmony  with  the  strange  lilt 
of  the  verse,  but  the  delight  it  gives  us  is  not  quite  of 
that  kind  we  look  for  in  a  poem.  Here  is  a  stanza, 
describing  how  Apollo's  presence  brings  prosperity  to 
the  farm : — 

Many  swarms  of  wild  bees  descended  on  our  fields  : 

Stately  stood  the  wheat-stalk  with  head  bent  high  : 
Big  of  heart  we  laboured  at  storing  mighty  yields, 

Wool  and  corn,  and  clusters  to  make  men  cry  ! 
Hand-like  rushed  the  vintage  ;  we  strung  the  bellied  skins 

Plump,  and  at  the  sealing  the  Youth's  voice  rose  : 
Maidens  clung  in  circle,  on  little  fists  their  chins  ; 

Gentle  beasties  through  pushed  a  cold  long  nose. 


234  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

We  are  to  suppose  a  ploughman  speaking :  and  if  for 
a  ploughman  he  is  over-accomplished  and  his  sympathies 
too  wide,  as  a  poet  he  is  perhaps  too  playful  in  his 
attitude  to  the  theme ;  not  that  we  could  forego  the 
playfulness,  but  that  the  poetic  illusion  somehow  is  im- 
paired.    And  then  there  is  the  refrain  : 

God  !  of  whom  music 
And  song  and  blood  are  pure, 
The  day  is  never  darkened 
That  had  thee  here  obscure. 

The  mingled  simplicity  and  uncouthness  of  this,  and  the 
studied  metrical  contrast  offered  in  it  to  the  unusual 
metre  of  the  preceding  verse,  suggest  that  our  horseman 
is  "  larking  "  at  a  very  high  gate  indeed,  and,  although 
there  is  no  doubt  he  clears  it,  we  think  we  catch  the 
rattle  of  his  hoofs  as  he  goes  over. 

This  element  of  conscious  craftsmanship  or  experi- 
mentation, recognisable  in  Meredith's  poetical  work 
from  the  beginning,  needs  to  be  noticed,  because  it  is 
undoubtedly  a  weak  spot  in  his  poetic  armour.  No 
recognition  of  his  greatness  as  a  poet  can  be  un- 
assailable unless  based  on  frankest  admission  of  his 
defects.  And  his  principal  defect — if  we  have  divined 
it  rightly — is  a  very  grave  defect  indeed,  nothing  less 
than  the  absence  of  instinctive  security  in  the  matter  of 
form.  The  hexameters,  published  in  1851,  are  indeed 
worse  as  hexameters  than  the  Fragments  of  the  Iliad  in 
translation  published  fifty  years  later  ;  but  the  true  spirit 
of  the  verse  appears  in  neither.  Again,  the  Cageing  of 
Ares,  except  for  the  early  Shipwreck  of  Idomcneus, 
the  only  piece  of  blank  verse  Meredith  has  produced, 
must  be  described  simply  as  a  failure  so  far  as  the 
handling  of  the  rhythm  is  concerned.  Meredith  is  a 
master  in  literature;  but  in  the  Cageing  of  Ares  you 
may  find  a  passage  twenty-three  lines  in  length  where 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  &  CRAFTSMAN   235 

in  twenty-two  cases  there  is  a  pause  at  the  end  of  the 
line  ;  and  this  is  not  the  writing  of  a  master.  The 
insecurity  to  which  these  errors  point  is  to  be  traced  in 
some,  even,  of  the  pieces  in  which  the  greatness  of 
poetic  achievement  is  least  disputable.  The  Meditation 
under  Stars  rises  in  the  fourth  stanza  to  a  splendour 
and  measured  weight  of  diction  for  which  we  should 
need  to  look  to  Milton  for  a  parallel ;  but  it  opens  quite 
unconvincingly,  with  hardly  more  effect,  so  far  as  the 
form  is  concerned,  than  a  well-written  exercise. 

What  links  are  ours  with  orbs  that  are 
So  resolutely  far  ? 

It  is  a  weak  first  line,  an  unhappy  note  to  strike  in 
prelude  to  a  theme  both  itself  so  sublime  and  to  be  so 
sublimely  handled.  And  the  fact  that  there  is  an  inten- 
tion in  its  weakness, — that  it  is  used  consciously  to 
suggest  the  hesitancy  which  might  have  prompted  the 
question, — this  does  not  strengthen  it.  In  recognising 
the  artifice,  we  recognise  the  intrusion  of  a  piece  of  in- 
congruous realism.  The  only  effect,  artistically  con- 
sidered, of  this  succession  of  jerky  monosyllables  is, 
as  it  were,  to  set  the  mind  on  stilts  (not  a  right  attitude 
for  any  kind  of  profitable  star-gazing),  and  all  through 
the  first  stanza,  despite  the  harmonious  beauty  of  the 
greater  number  of  the  verses  composing  it,  the  memory 
of  this  stilted  motion  is  never  quite  obliterated  ;  the 
irregularity  of  the  rhyme,  a  slight  faultiness  perhaps 
of  language,  perhaps  of  association,  in  one  or  two 
expressions,  suffice  to  prolong  the  opening  sense  of  dis- 
comfort. And  then  a  second  check  is  given  in  the 
changed  construction  of  the  second  stanza. 

These  visible  immortals  beam 
Allurement  to  the  dream  : 
Ireful  at  human  hungers  brook 
No  question  in  the  look. 


236  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

The  change  is  intelligible  enough.  We  are  to  throw 
down  our  stilts ;  the  sentimentalist  is  warned,  with 
terse  severity,  to  stifle  fantastic  aspirations.  But,  again, 
there  is  something  mechanical  in  the  execution  of  the 
idea ;  the  form  is  over-elaborate ;  the  changes  are'  not 
felt  instinctively ;  they  seem,  if  anything,  to  be  offered 
as  a  substitute,  in  this  introductory  section  of  the  Ode, 
for  a  pure  poetic  conception  ;  with  the  result  that  they 
are  poetically  unconvincing,  and  our  relief  is  indescrib- 
able when  the  poet  at  last  sails  away  into  the  larger 
atmosphere  where  trivialities  are  forgotten,  and  in  which, 
retaining  all  the  asperities  and  obscurities  of  his  style, 
he  uses  them  as  instruments  subservient  to  a  grand 
symphonic  harmony. 

The  spirit  leaps  alight, 

Doubts  not  in  them  is  he, 
The  binder  of  his  sheaves,  the  same,  the  right : 
Of  magnitude  to  magnitude  is  wrought, 
To  feel  it  large  of  the  great  life  they  hold  : 
In  them  to  come,  or  vaster  intervolved, 
The  issues  known  in  us,  our  unsolved  solved  : 
That  there  with  toil  Life  climbs  the  self-same  Tree, 
Whose  roots  enrichment  have  from  ripeness  dropped. 
So  may  we  read  and  little  find  them  cold  : 
Let  it  but  be  the  lord  of  Mind  to  guide 
Our  eyes  ;  no  branch  of  Reason's  growing  lopped  ; 
Nor  dreaming  on  a  dream  ;  but  fortified 
By  day  to  penetrate  black  midnight ;  see, 
Hear,  feel,  outside  the  senses  ;  even  that  we, 
The  specks  of  dust  upon  a  mound  of  mould, 
We  who  reflect  those  rays,  though  low  our  place, 

To  them  are  lastingly  allied. 

You  may  not  know  what  this  means  when  you  read  it 
for  the  first  time  ;  but  you  cannot  read  it  without  know- 
ing at  once  that  it  is  poetry,  and  poetry  of  the  most 
exalted  kind. 

Among  Meredith's  lighter  efforts  none  enjoys  greater 
popularity  than  Love  in  the  Valley.  This  is  un- 
fortunate :  not  that  the  poem  does  not  deserve  to  be 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  &  CRAFTSMAN   237 

popular,  but  that  its  merits  are  not,  on  the  whole,  those 
that  are  most  characteristic,  most  essential  in  its  author, 
while  yet  it  so  far  exemplifies  certain  characteristic 
defects  as  to  create  or  make  way  for  a  prejudice  in  the 
minds  of  readers  who  turn  to  it  as  an  introduction 
to  Meredith's  poetical  work.  For  even  Love  in  the 
Valley,  with  all  its  exquisite  melodiousness,  is  some- 
what over-studied,  somewhat  precious,  somewhat  un- 
real. Just  because  you  have,  not  merely  a  flowing,  but 
a  rippling,  rhythm,  with  every  ripple  differently  shaped 
and  every  least  difference  calculated  for  its  effect,  it 
becomes  almost  an  annoyance  to  find  here  and  there 
a  verse  that  violates  the  very  laws  on  recognition  of 
which  the  whole  significance  of  the  melody  depends. 
Rightly  to  scan  the  lines  you  must  understand  that,  in 
addition  to  the  ordinary  long  and  short  accented  or  un- 
accented syllables,  you  have  to  deal  with  a  further  long 
accented  syllable  equivalent  in  value  to  the  normal  long 
and  short  combined ;  that  is,  the  measure  being  trochaic, 
you  are  liable  at  any  point  in  the  line  to  have  the 
trochee  replaced  by  a  single  long  accented  syllable. 
Very  piquant  and  unusual,  very  beautiful  also  are  the 
effects  that  Meredith  obtains  by  this  expedient.     In 

Large  and  smoky  red  the  Sun's  c61d  disk  drops 

he  uses  four  in  succession,  onomatopceically.     In 

Up  lanes,  woods  thr6ugh,  they  troop  in  joyful  bands, 

he  does  the  same,  even  more  boldly,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  line.     In 

Streaming  like  the  flag-rded  South  Wdst  bl6wn 

we  have  five,  leading  us  in  a  triumphal  progress  to  the 
conclusion.  And  the  success,  the  true  metrical  effect, 
of  these  lines  depends  upon  the  fact  that  the  accent  im- 
poses itself;  the  reader  is  asked  to  be  more  than  usually 


238  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

attentive  to  degrees  of  stress,  but,  granted  this  attentive  - 
ness  on  his  part,  the  writing  is  such  that  there  can 
be  no  question  what  the  stresses  are  or  where  they  fall. 
But  to  arouse  sensitive  attention  of  this  kind  is  to 
incur  a  responsibility;  you  must  respect  what  you'have 
aroused.     Thus,  in  the  couplet, 

No,  she  is  athirst  and  drinking  up  her  wonder, 
Earth  to  her  is  young  as  the  slip  of  the  new  moon, 

the  second  line,  with  its  inversion  of  accents  in  the  last 
four  words,  instead  of  an  unnoticeable  laxity  becomes  a 
serious  stumbling-block  ;  and  in 

Cows  flap  a  slow  tail  knee-deep  in  the  river, 

since  the  sense  telling  me  that  slow  tail  are  long  accents 
tells  me  that  knee-deep  are  the  same,  the  poet  who 
relied  upon  it  in  the  first  case  has  no  right  to  violate 
it  in  the  second.  To  write  in  such  a  metre  is  itself  a 
tour  de  force;  the  subtler,  the  more  delicate  the  grada- 
tions you  employ  for  your  effect,  the  more  critical  the 
spirit  of  poesy  becomes,  till,  in  the  end,  the  least  flaw 
seems  an  unpardonable  crime,  as  revealing  the  artifice 
of  the  whole. 

It  would  seem  a  mere  perversity  of  criticism  to 
suggest  that  Meredith,  who  has  written  some  of  the 
most  delightful  rhythmical  studies  in  the  language  (even 
Phaethon,  of  which  we  spoke  above  disrespectfully,  is  a 
magnificent  tour  de  force),  spoils  the  quality  of  his  work 
by  metrical  deficiencies :  nor  is  it  intended  to  deny  that 
here  and  there  he  writes  melody  as  spontaneous  as  it  is 
beautiful.  What  we  would  suggest  is  that,  in  the  mass 
of  his  work,  he  is  either  conscious  of  rhythm  and  in 
danger  of  artificiality,  or  forgetful  of  it  and  in  danger 
of  roughness.  It  would  seem  to  be  to  the  latter  fault 
that  two  of  his  noblest  efforts — A  Faith  on  Trial  and 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  c>  CRAFTSMAN   239 

The  Day  of  the  Daughter  of  Hades — owe  a  certain 
loss  of  bloom.  The  latter  opens,  indeed,  with  a  melody 
as  perfect  and  unreflective  as  the  song  of  any  bird  ;  it  is 
like  a  blackbird  carolling ;  but  the  promise  of  calm 
water,  of  smooth,  flowing  narrative,  with  which  the 
lovely  first  stanza  tempts  us  on,  is  unfulfilled. 

He  who  has  looked  upon  Earth 
Deeper  than  flower  and  fruit, 
Losing  some  hue  of  his  mirth, 
As  the  tree  striking  rock  at  the  root 
Unto  him  shall  the  marvellous  tale 
Of  Callistes  more  humanly  come 
With  the  touch  on  his  breast  than  a  hail 
From  the  markets  that  hum. 

You  might  imagine  the  most  beautiful  poem  in  any 
language  beginning  so.  But  the  note  is  imperfectly 
maintained  ;  only  here  and  there  in  the  course  of  the 
poem  do  we  regain  this  mingled  depth  and  radiance 
of  tone ;  the  rhythm  keeps  us  for  the  most  part  riding 
uneasily,  and  the  roughness  in  the  swing  of  it  impairs 
our  appreciation  of  the  accuracies  of  detail  by  which 
this  roughness  is  produced. 

The  best  part  of  Meredith's  poetic  achievement  seems 
to  be  included  in  those  works  in  which  the  form  chosen 
is  at  once  simple  and  restrictive,  or  in  which  discursive- 
ness or  irregularity  of  form  is  balanced  by  a  restrictive 
influence  from  the  subject-matter  and  the  deep  serious- 
ness with  which  he  approaches  it.  Thus,  of  the  two 
poems  just  referred  to  The  Day  of  the  Daughter 
of  Hades  and  A  Faith  on  Trial — we  may  suggest 
that  A  Faith  on  Trial  loses  in  significance,  artistically, 
as  a  result  of  its  irregularity,  or  want  of  principle,  in 
the  scheme  of  the  rhyme ;  not  that  there  is  virtue 
inherent  in  any  scheme  for  its  own  sake,  not  that 
it  matters  whether  the  lines  rhyme  in  alternation  or 
in  pairs ;  but  that  the  haphazard  system  employed  in 


240  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

A  Faith  on  Trial  emphasises  whatever  complexity 
there  is  in  its  structure,  whatever  want  of  clearness  in 
the  presentment  of  the  thought.  And  perhaps  it  is  not 
a  mere  coincidence  that  the  most  beautiful  passage  in 
the  poem  is  also  the  most  regular  and  the  simplest : — 

I  bowed  as  a  leaf  in  rain  ; 

As  a  tree  when  the  leaf  is  shed 

To  winds  in  the  season  at  wane  : 

And  when  from  my  soul  I  said, 

May  the  worm  be  trampled  :  smite, 

Sacred  Reality  !  power 

Filled  me  to  front  it  aright. 

I  had  come  of  my  faith's  ordeal. 

Again,  of  all  Meredith's  really  conspicuous  efforts, 
perhaps  the  least  successful,  from  the  point  of  view 
from  which  we  are  now  regarding  him,  are  the  Odes  in 
Contribution  to  the  Song  of  French  History.  That  they 
are  full  of  brilliant  writing,  that  they  show  a  masterly 
imaginative  grasp  of  character  and  situation,  need  not 
be  said.  And  the  earliest  written,  that  called  France, 
December,  i8jo,  has  a  recognisably  spontaneous  flow  of 
feeling.  The  opening  of  the  Ode  Napoleon,  which  Mr. 
Trevelyan  quotes,  is  among  the  best  things  Meredith 
has  done.  If  Napoleon  had  been  a  poet,  he  might  have 
written  it  himself.  But  the  Odes,  as  a  whole,  fail  of 
effect,  not  merely  for  lack  of  a  clear  framework  whether 
of  rhyme  or  rhythm,  but  also  because  their  theme, 
though  kindling  all  the  author's  enthusiasm,  is  of  a 
kind  not  in  itself  calculated  to  guide  or  govern  the 
energies  it  has  aroused  ;  which  in  consequence  surge 
forth  for  the  most  part  in  somewhat  barbarous  fashion 
and  vent  themselves,  almost  volcanically,  like  lava 
streams.  Or,  again,  to  compare  two  of  the  finest  of  his 
works,  Modern  Love  is  greater  than  The  Sage  Enamoured, 
not  because  the  conception  is  greater,  but  because  the 
method    of    presentment    in    isolated    pictures,    which 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  &  CRAFTSMAN    241 

Meredith  has  chosen  for  it,  elicits  from  him — demands 
of  him,  one  might  almost  say — the  decisive  outline,  the 
almost  epigrammatic  exactitude  of  phrase,  in  which  he 
is  at  his  best. 

How  many  a  thing  which  we  cast  to  the  ground, 
When  others  pick  it  up  becomes  a  gem  ! 
We  grasp  at  all  the  wealth  it  is  to  them  ; 
And  by  reflected  light  its  worth  is  found. 

It  could  not  have  been  more  simply,  more  perfectly  said. 

Mark  where  the  pressing  wind  shoots  javelin-like 
Its  skeleton  shadow  on  the  broad-backed  wave  ! 
Here  is  a  fitting  spot  to  dig  Love's  grave  ; 
Here  where  the  ponderous  breakers  plunge  and  strike 
And  dart  their  hissing  tongues  high  up  the  sand. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  imagine  a  description  truer  to 
the  object,  raising  at  the  same  time  so  admirably  all  the 
menacing  associations  which  the  theme  requires.  The 
repeated  "  k,"  what  pitiless  keenness  it  has  in  it,  what 
bitter  concentration  !  And  there  is  hardly  a  word  the 
sense  of  which  is  not  reduplicated  in  the  sound,  as  if  they 
had  every  one  been  coined  to  fill  their  places.  Passages 
like  this — Modern  Love  is  full  of  them — show  a  mastery 
which  staggers  praise.  Here  is  another,  and  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  the  poem  contains  : — 

My  tears  are  on  thee,  that  have  rarely  dropped 
As  balm  for  any  bitter  wound  of  mine  : 
My  breast  will  open  for  thee  at  a  sign  ! 
But,  no  :  we  are  two  reed-pipes,  coarsely  stopped  : 
The  God  once  filled  them  with  his  mellow  breath  ; 
And  they  were  music  till  he  flung  them  down, 
Used  !  used  !  Hear  now  the  discord-loving  clown 
Puff  his  gross  spirit  in  them,  worse  than  death. 

It  is  certainly  not  the  least  merit  of  passages  like  these 
that  they  seem  to  renew  the  vitality,  to  enhance  the 
dignity  of  the  language  in  which  they  are  written. 
Meredith,  it  appears,  is  among  those  rare  performers, 

R 


242  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

under  whose  touch  the  instrument  grows  richer,  nobler 
than  it  was  before.  But  we  may  note  that  the  perfect 
success  of  the  imagery  is  partly  due  to  its  detachment. 
In  Modern  Love,  with  each  completed  section  the  chain 
of  metaphor  breaks,  and  there  is  a  fresh  start  made  ; 
the  writer  is  thus  protected  against  one  of  his  worst 
temptations, — if  such  a  phrase  may  be  permitted, — 
the  over-elaboration  of  cross-reference  in  the  use  of 
metaphor,  and  the  reader  (though  he  may  not  always 
follow  the  story)  artistically  at  least  knows  his  bearings, 
and  does  not  lose  the  force  of  a  passage  in  preliminary 
attempts  to  discover  where  he  is.  Now  it  is  exactly 
here  that  The  Sage  Enamoured  suffers,  from  the  absence, 
that  is,  of  these  regular  recurrent  breaks  in  its 
metaphorical  system.  There  is  equal,  in  fact  there  is 
greater,  depth  of  thought ;  there  is  the  same  fecundity 
and  felicity  of  image  and  of  phrase  ;  but,  the  narrative 
being  continuous,  much  of  the  writing  seems  to  miss 
fire,  because  it  has  not  been  confided  to  the  reader 
what  object  is  being  aimed  at.  To  be  understood,  it 
must  be  read  twenty  times  at  least.  From  the  first 
you  come  upon  single  lines  and  isolated  passages, 
sufficient  in  themselves  to  compel  attention  to  the  whole 
in  which  they  occur  : — 

Slave  is  the  open  mouth  beneath  the  closed. 

He  gave  her  of  the  deep  well  she  had  sprung. 

But  at  first  the  impression  they  give  is  of  floating  spars 
in  rough  water,  relics  of  a  good  ship  foundered. 

Are  they  parted,  then  expect 
Some  one  sailing  will  be  wrecked  ! 

Parted  they  are,  and  the  wreck  no  longer  in  the  future. 
At  least  that  is  the  inference.  It  is  a  mistake,  however. 
No  shipwreck  has  occurred.  The  fact  is,  that  there  is  a 
problem  to  solve;  and  the  reward  for  solving  it  is  the 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  c>  CRAFTSMAN    243 

delight  which  springs — not,  as  some  allege,  from  self- 
congratulation  and  relief  that  solved  it  is — but  from 
what  perhaps  seems  the  discovery,  and  is,  at  least,  the 
recognition,  of  a  noble,  if  a  faulty,  poem.  And  the 
faultiness  would  seem  to  consist  in  this,  that  the  subject 
being  of  similar  nature  and  equal  complexity  with  that 
treated  in  Modern  Love,  the  style  is  not  rightly  ac- 
commodated to  the  different  method  chosen  for  its 
presentment.  Here  and  there  an  aspect  of  the  situa- 
tion is  caught  and  pictured  with  marvellous  vividness 
and  force :  but  the  effect  of  the  whole  is  blurred  for 
want  of  that  clear  articulation  of  the  parts,  which 
the  method  of  continuous  narration  imperatively 
demands. 

She  turned  to  him,  and,  "This  you  seek  is  gone ; 

Look  in,"  she  said,  as  pants  the  furnace,  brief, 

Frost-white.     She  gave  his  hearing  sight  to  view 

The  silent  chamber  of  a  brown  curled  leaf  : 

Thing  that  had  throbbed  ere  shot  black  lightning  through. 

No  further  sign  of  heart  could  he  discern  : 

The  picture  of  her  speech  was  winter  sky  ; 

A  headless  figure  folding  a  cleft  urn, 

Where  tears  once  at  the  overflow  were  dry. 

There  is  nothing  finer  in  Modern  Love  itself:  it  is  a 
passage  which  "gives  hearing  sight"  indeed!  Every 
metaphor  illuminates,  and  the  swift  transition  from  one 
to  another  image  is  effected  with  perfect  clearness. 
This  swiftness  of  transition  in  the  use  of  metaphor  is  a 
characteristic  of  Meredith's  style  to  which  all  his  critics 
pay  their  tribute.  The  keenness  of  vision  and  exuber- 
ance of  intellectual  power  which  make  it  possible  are 
certainly  essential  parts  of  his  literary  genius.  But  in 
his  finished  work — particularly  in  his  poems — the  effect 
he  produces  by  it  must  often  be  considered  faulty  from 
the  artistic  point  of  view.  For  the  artistic  value  of  a 
metaphor  surely  depends  upon  the  clearness  with  which 


244  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

the  image  is  related  to  the  theme.     A  quotation  will 

explain  the  point : — 

Young  captain  of  a  crazy  bark  ! 
Oh,  tameless  heart  in  battered  frame  ! 
Thy  sailing  orders  have  a  mark, 
And  hers  is  not  the  name.1 

The  word  "  bark  "  is  commonly  used  in  verse  as  a  mere 
synonym  for  a  boat  or  ship  :  but  when  we  see  it  used 
as  Meredith  here  uses  it,  we  cannot  fail  to  recollect  that 
bark  is  a  substance  of  which  some  boats  are  made,  and 
we  instinctively  combine  the  two  meanings  of  the  word, 
or  rather  the  two  words,  in  one ;  adding  to  our  idea  of 
ship  those  qualities  of  fragility  and  unseaworthiness  in 
bark  which  are  consequent  upon  its  being,  what  after 
all  a  ship  is,  a  hollow  and  somewhat  brittle  shell.  In 
fact,  the  word  draws  from  its  context  all  the  charm  and 
stimulus  of  a  metaphor,  and  is  itself  a  metaphor  in 
epitome.  But  there  is  a  further  point.  It  is  useless  to 
call  a  man's  heart  a  ship,  unless  side  by  side  with  the 
image  the  root  idea  instinctively  presents  itself,  concen- 
trating attention  upon  certain  characteristics  of  the 
emotional  life  to  which  navigation  really  presents  a 
parallel.  And  the  word  bark  is  so  placed  and  so  used 
in  this  stanza  as  to  summon  up  all  these  analogies  with 
perfect  clearness.  Once  the  image  is  thus  in  perfectly 
clear  relation  to  the  theme,  it  is  a  matter  of  taste 
and  convenience  merely,  how  long  the  use  of  any  par- 
ticular image  is  maintained  ;  the  metaphor  of  the 
"  bark,"  just  quoted,  dominates  the  entire  poem  it 
occurs  in  ;  but  the  images  may  succeed  to  one  another 
like  lightning  flashes,  provided  their  common  relation 
to  the  central  theme  is  clear.  Now  Meredith  habitually 
writes  in  lightning  flashes  :  but  it  is  his  tendency  to 
omit  all  reference  to  that  central  theme,  which  in  their 
combination  the  flashes  are  intended  to  illumine.     This 

1    I  he  Last  Contention. 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  <V  CRAFTSMAN    245 

is  apt  in  his  hands  to  become,  as  it  were,  the  x>  the 
unknown  quantity,  presupposed  in  every  metaphor,  and 
only  discoverable  from  the  sequent  images  by  a  process 
of  deduction.  The  result  is  a  kind  of  obscurity  which 
seems  to  violate  recognisable  principles  of  artistic 
workmanship,  and  much  of  the  writing  in  The  Sage 
Enamoured  is  open  to  severe  criticism  in  this  regard. 

No  longer  colouring,  with  skips 
At  tangles,  picture  that  for  eyes  in  tears 
Might  swim  the  sequence,  she  addressed  her  lips 
To  do  the  scaffold's  office  at  his  ears. 

In  view  of  such  a  passage  as  this — admirably  pointed 
as  it  is  when  you  have  grasped  the  hang  of  it — it  can 
be  no  matter  for  surprise  that  simple  persons  consider 
Meredith's  mastery  confined  to  phantasmagoria,  and 
discover  in  his  style,  not  the  revelation  springing  from 
poetic  insight,  but  a  shifting  kaleidoscopic  shiftlessness. 
It  was  suggested  earlier  that  Meredith's  highest 
achievement  as  a  poet  was  to  be  looked  for,  either  in 
pieces  conceived  in  a  form  both  simple  and  restrictive, 
or  else  in  pieces  in  which,  whatever  their  form,  the 
tendency  to  discursiveness  or  freaks  of  intellect,  on  the 
one  side,  and  to  experimental  craftsmanship  on  the 
other,  was  controlled  by  a  high  seriousness  in  his  attitude 
to  their  subject-matter.  Among  these  many  of  the 
Sonnets  and  the  bulk  of  the  great  Odes x  are  to  be 
included,  with  the  Hymn  to  Colour  at  their  head. 
Some  of  Meredith's  least  poetic  traits  appear  in  them  : 
they  are  didactic  :  they  are  obscure.  But  side  by  side 
with  Modern  Love  and  the  best  of  the  novels — and 
so  far  as   any  part  of  Meredith's  achievement   can  be 

1  The  Ode  to  the  Spirit  of  Earth  in  Autumn  must  be  excepted.  Of 
extreme  interest  as  a  forecast  of  Meredith's  later  achievement,  as  his  first 
serious  attempt  to  utter  the  note  by  which  he  will  be  known  to  posterity, 
containing  also  in  the  opening  paragraphs  much  splendid  imagery,  the 
Ode,  for  all  its  power  and  passion,  seems  to  fail  of  the  sustained  dignity 
and  exaltation  necessary  to  an  artistic  presentment  of  the  theme. 


246  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

separated  from  what  is  after  all  his  greatest  achieve- 
ment, the  mass,  the  cumulative  effect  of  his  work  as  a 
whole — they  represent  the  climax  of  his  power  ;  it  is  in 
these  that  he  is  most  himself;  they  contain  at  once  the 
most  perfect  and  the  most  characteristic  of  all  'his 
utterances.  At  the  great  iron  foundries  one  of  the 
sights  offered  to  the  amazement  of  the  curious  is  the 
steam-hammer — framed  to  flatten  a  ton  of  iron  at  a 
blow — delicately  cracking  nuts.  The  task  is  performed 
with  perfect  accuracy,  but  it  leaves  a  sense  of  discomfort 
behind  it  in  the  matter  of  adaptation  of  means  to  ends. 
Much  of  Meredith's  lighter  poetry,  accomplished  as  it 
always,  exquisite  as  it  often  is,  produces  a  somewhat 
similar  effect.  We  may  quote  for  example  the  daintiest, 
and  one  of  the  loveliest  also,  of  his  pure  lyrics — 

O  briar  scents,  on  yon  wet  wing 

Of  warm  South-west  wind  brushing  by, 

What  could  be  nearer  to  perfection  than  these  two 
opening  lines  ?  Why!  they  have  the  very  weight  of  the 
sweetness  in  them,  the  lingering,  reviving  sweetness 
carried,  caught  away,  on  that  soft,  moist  breath  of  air. 
We  must  hear  them  again  : — 

O  briar  scents,  on  yon  wet  wing 
Of  warm  South-west  wind  brushing  by, 
You  mind  me  of  the  sweetest  thing 
That  ever  mingled  frank  and  shy  : 
When  she  and  I,  by  love  enticed, 
Beneath  the  orchard-apples  met, 
In  equal  halves  a  ripe  one  sliced, 
And  smelt  the  juices  ere  we  ate. 

That  apple  of  the  briar-scent, 
Among  our  lost  in  Britain  now, 
Was  green  of  rind,  and  redolent 
Of  sweetness  as  a  milking  cow. 
The  briar  gives  it  back,  well-nigh 
The  damsel  with  her  teeth  on  it ; 
Her  twinkle  between  frank  and  shy, 
My  thirst  to  bite  where  she  had  bit. 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  &»  CRAFTSMAN    247 

In  the  third  line  the  "mind"  is  faintly  disconcerting, 
and  the  charming  effect  of  alliteration, linking  the  "mind" 
to  the  "  mingled,"  hardly  makes  it  less  so.  Then  the 
phrase  "  beneath  the  orchard-apples  " — perhaps  because 
of  its  over-compression — seems  just  to  miss  the  lyrical 
note,  and  prepares  the  mind  for  the  second  line  of  the 
second  stanza  with  its  patent  revelation  of  the  giant 
hammer  nut-cracking.  Spite  of  the  delightful  theme 
and  the  delightful  execution  of  it,  the  poem  is  a  freak, 
and  to  say  that  it  was  not  intended  to  be  more,  even  if 
that  were  true,  would  still  leave  certain  inconsistencies 
of  association  in  the  language  unexplained.  A  similar 
criticism  might  be  advanced  against  the  majority  of  the 
lyrics,  strictly  so  called,  perhaps  even  against  Woodland 
Peace,  the  most  characteristic  and  profoundest  of  them 
all.  A  touch  of  affectation  appears  in  its  simplicity  and 
even  in  its  completeness.  And  if  it  were  not  that  the 
simplicity  verges  here  and  there  upon  obscurity,  one 
might  say  it  was  too  perfect. 

Sweet  as  Eden  is  the  air, 

And  Eden-sweet  the  ray. 
No  paradise  is  lost  for  them 
Who  foot  by  branching  root  and  stem, 
And  lightly  with  the  woodland  share 
The  change  of  night  and  day  .  .  . 

It  is  a  lovely  thing:  but  there  is  something  a  little 
disquieting  in  the  vision  it  gives  us  of  the  giant  subdu- 
ing his  powers.  Meredith  touches  the  height  of  his 
artistic  greatness  when  his  power  is  not  subdued,  but 
taxed  to  the  uttermost.  It  is  not  that  his  language  be- 
comes simplified  under  the  strain  ; — that  is  far  from 
being  the  case  ; — it  is  that  the  peculiarities  of  construc- 
tion, the  bizarrete  of  occasional  words  and  expressions, 
the  ruggedness  of  style,  the  very  severity  of  the  claim 
he  makes  upon  the  intellectual  apprehension  of  his 
reader,  have  here  a  strictly  artistic  value  as  bearing 


248  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

recognisably  upon  the  size  and  sublimity  of  the  theme, 
and  as  expressing  the  artist's  fervour  and  enthusiasm 
in  presenting  it.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  part  of  his  in- 
vocation of  the  Spirit  of  Comedy — 

Thou,  of  the  highest,  the  unwritten  Law 
We  read  upon  that  building's  architrave 
In  the  mind's  firmament,  by  men  upraised 
With  sweat  of  blood  when  they  had  quitted  cave 
For  fellowship,  and  rearward  looked  amazed, 
Where  the  prime  motive  gapes  a  lurid  jaw — 
Thou,  soul  of  wakened  heads,  art  armed  to  warn, 
Restrain,  lest  we  backslide  on  whence  we  sprang, 
Scarce  better  than  our  dwarf  beginning  shoot, 
Of  every  gathered  pearl  and  blossom  shorn  ; 

or  here  again,  a  passage  still  nobler,  more  majestic,  as 
concerned  rather  with  the  forward  than  the  rearward 
glance,  and  thus  more  central  in  the  mind  of  the  author 
and  dearer  to  his  heart :  the  quotation  is  from  The  Test 
of  Manhood : — 

This  gift  of  penetration  and  embrace, 

His  prize  from  tidal  battles  lost  or  won, 

Reveals  the  scheme  to  animate  his  race  : 

How  that  it  is  a  warfare  but  begun  ; 

Unending  ;  with  no  Power  to  interpose  ; 

No  prayer,  save  for  strength  to  keep  his  ground, 

Heard  of  the  Highest ;  never  battle's  close, 

The  victory  complete  and  victor  crowned  : 

Nor  solace  in  defeat,  save  from  that  sense 

Of  strength  well  spent,  which  is  the  strength  renewed. 

In  manhood  must  he  find  his  competence  ; 

In  his  clear  mind  the  spiritual  food  : 

God  being  there  while  he  his  fight  maintains  ; 

Throughout  his  mind  the  Master  Mind  being  there, 

While  he  rejects  the  suicide  despair  ; 

Accepts  the  spur  of  explicable  pains  ; 

Obedient  to  Nature,  not  her  slave  : 

Her  lord,  if  to  her  rigid  laws  he  bows ; 

Her  dust  if  with  his  conscience  he  plays  knave, 

And  bids  the  Passions  on  the  Pleasures  browse. 

It  is  no  impeachment  of  the  poetic  quality  of  such  a 
passage  as  this  to  say  that  it  is  a  sermon  ;  what  is  rele- 
vant to  observe   is  that  the   sermon  is  the  life  of  the 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  &>  CRAFTSMAN    249 

preacher,  and  that  it  is  couched  in  language  which  has 
the  living  qualities  proclaiming  it  to  be  so.  "  For  there 
might  be  a  poetry,"  says  Jowett,  "  which  would  be  the 
hymn  of  divine  perfection,  the  harmony  of  goodness 
and  truth  among  men :  a  strain  .  .  .  which  should  bring 
back  the  ages  when  the  poet  was  man's  only  teacher 
and  best  friend :  .  .  .  which  might  elicit  the  simple 
principles,  .  .  .  the  essential  forms,  of  truth  and  justice 
out  of  the  variety  of  opinion  and  the  complexity  of 
modern  ..cciety,  .  .  .  which  should  be  based  not  on  vain 
longings  or  faint  imaginings,  but  on  a  clear  insight  into 
the  nature  of  man."1  This  is  the  poetry  which  Mere- 
dith has  made  it  his  central  aim  to  write,  this  the 
theme  which  evokes  from  him  the  poetic  passion  in  its 
purest  form.  It  is  in  those  poems  in  which  he  is  dealing 
directly  with  the  nature  and  destiny  of  man — and  with 
these  we  must  include  some  others,  such  as  Hard 
Weather,  The  Thrush  in  February,  The  Lark  Ascend- 
ing, and,  most  notable  of  all,  the  Hymn  to  Colour, 
in  which  he  sees  the  life  of  man  reflected  in  the 
life  of  nature — in  short,  it  is  in  those  poems  whose 
theme  is  at  once  the  widest  and  profoundest  which  can 
present  itself  to  human  intelligence,  that  Meredith 
rises  to  his  full  poetic  stature ;  and  he  rises  to  it,  both 
because  they  require  it  of  him,  and  because,  his  stature 
being  what  it  is,  there  is  no  lesser  theme  to  which  he  can 
surrender  himself  whole-heartedly. 

No  doubt  it  is  the  absence  of  complete  whole- 
heartedness  which  gives  the  bulk  of  his  poetical  work 
its  experimental  flavour.  There  are  very  few  of  his 
pieces  which  do  not  contain  as  much  poetic  insight,  as 
much  fidelity,  and  often  as  much  beauty,  of  phrase  as 
any  poet  of  the  nineteenth  century  could  have  given 
them.      But  they  lack  inevitableness :    he  made  them 

1  Introduction  to  Ptato's  Republic. 


250  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

more  because  he  chose  to  make  them  than  because  he 
must.  Their  tone,  their  atmosphere,  their  controlling 
medium,  is  determined  from  without,  not  from  within. 
And  this  kind  of  external  determination  never  faijs  to 
betray  itself;  for  the  true  poetic  atmosphere  is  imitable 
by  no  artifice,  and  there  is  nothing  capable  of  produc- 
ing it  but  the  emotional  stimulus  from  which  it  flows 
spontaneously.  Goethe's  lighter  poetry  has  been  sub- 
jected to  a  somewhat  similar  criticism.  But  the  fault 
of  Goethe's  lyrics,  if  indeed  they  have  a  fault,  was 
that  his  natural  instinct  for  form — that  instinct  in  which 
we  believe  Meredith  to  be  deficient — ran  away  with 
him,  and  allowed  him  to  make  light  of  his  matter.  This 
Meredith  never  does :  he  never  lightly  indulges  or 
trifles  with  his  emotion,  and  if  his  lyrics  are  unconvinc- 
ing it  is  not  because  they  are  not  genuinely  felt,  but 
because  incongruous  elements  are  thrust  into  them  from 
a  weight  of  intellect  behind,  for  which  the  feeling,  per- 
fectly genuine  as  it  is,  can  provide  no  adequate  vehicle. 
But  Meredith's  magnificent  intellectual  equipment, 
though  it  baffles  the  artist  in  him  except  in  face  of  the 
few  subjects  on  which  his  whole  nature  is  engaged, 
enables  him  nevertheless  to  combine  observation  and 
allegory — as  notably  in  the  Woods  of  Westermain — 
with  a  mastery  of  artifice  which,  if  not  art  according 
to  our  central  understanding  of  the  term,  must  yet,  in  a 
subsidiary  sense,  be  acknowledged  to  be  both  art  and 
art  of  an  extremely  delightful  kind  :  and  the  same 
intellectual  power,  though  frequently  injuring  the 
poetic  quality  of  his  compositions,  puts  his  verses — 
considered  not  only  with  a  view  to  literary  ingenuity, 
but  with  a  view  also  to  a  hundred  other  traces  of  a 
master  hand  displayed  in  them — among  the  most 
fascinating  that  have  ever  been  produced.  It  would  be 
a  pleasure  to  examine  in  detail  one  of  the  most  perfect 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  &  CRAFTSMAM   251 

of  these  lesser  pieces,  and  I  would  suggest  turning  for 
this  purpose  to  The  Orchard  and  the  Heath,  both 
because  it  is — resembling  in  this,  alas !  the  whole  of 
Meredith's  poetry — less  known  than  it  deserves  to  be, 
and  also  because,  without  being  in  the  least  abstruse,  it 
shows  the  author's  versatility,  the  many-sidedness  of 
his  genius,  in  a  remarkable  degree.  It  is  a  description 
of  two  parties  of  children,  one  rich,  one  poor,  whom 
the  poet  passes  in  the  course  of  a  day's  walk  in  the 
country,  seen,  both  of  them,  in  the  light  of  a  spiritual 
brotherhood  typified  in  the  blue  sky,  their  common 
canopy.  The  first,  among  the  apple  trees,  are  those  to 
whom  life  is  kind — 

I  could  have  watched  them  till  the  daylight  fled, 
Their  pretty  bower  made  such  a  light  of  day. 

A  small  one  tumbling  sang,  "  Oh  !  head  !  " 

The  rest  to  comfort  her  straightway 
Seized  on  a  branch  and  thumped  down  apples  red. 

There  is  a  charm  in  this  that  positively  exhilarates. 
The  beauty,  the  sympathy,  of  the  first  two  lines,  the 
same  sympathy  expressed  in  shorthand  and  with  just 
the  suggestion  of  a  twinkle  from  the  Comic  or  some 
kindred  Spirit  in  the  third,  the  realism  of  the  last,  with 
its  heavy  fall  of  apples  to  the  ground,  it  is  all  admirable; 
and  yet  one  may  question  whether  a  poet  has  the  right 
to  change  his  mood  so  rapidly,  to  crowd  so  much  into 
so  small  a  space.  Right  or  wrong,  no  one  but  Meredith 
could  have  done  it,  and  its  delightfulness  when  done  is 
past  dispute. 

My  footpath  left  the  pleasant  farms  and  lanes, 

Soft  cottage  smoke,  straight  cocks  a-crow,  gay  flowers  ; 

Beyond  the  wheel-ruts  of  the  wains 

Across  a  heath  I  walked  for  hours, 
And  met  its  rival  tenants,  rays  and  rains. 

The  masterful  felicity  of  all  this  is  revealed  in  the  last 
three  words  of  the  stanza,  where  artifice  plainly  appears. 


252  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

You  have  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  village  and  the 
environs  of  the  village  given  you  in  two  lines, — includ- 
ing one  phrase,  "straight  cocks  a-crow,"  which  is  a  com- 
plete picture  in  itself, — by  the  end  of  the  third  ,line, 
though  you  will  hardly  divine  the  cause  of  it,  the  open 
heath  is  all  about  you.  The  gipsy  encampment  next 
comes  in  view. 

Here,  too,  were  many  children,  quick  to  scan 

A  new  thing  coming  ;  swarthy  cheeks,  white  teeth  : 

In  many-coloured  rags  they  ran, 

Like  iron  runlets  of  the  heath. 
Dispersed  lay  broth-pot,  sticks,  and  drinking-can. 

The  details  are  so  chosen  as  to  suggest  whatever  they 
do  not  actually  express :  the  scene  is  before  you  in  its 
entirety,  the  animal  alertness,  the  human  neglect,  the 
natural  picturesqueness  of  it  all.  And  now  you  are 
to  watch  a  race,  with  the  Spirit  of  Comedy  for  referee — 

Three  girls  .  .  . 
(if  the  boys  had  raced,  it  would  not  have  been  half  so 

'  '  .  .  .  with  shoulders  like  a  boat  at  sea 

Tipped  sideways  by  the  wave  (their  clothing  slid 

P'rom  either  ridge  unequally), 

Lean,  swift,  and  voluble,  bestrid 
A  starting-point,  unfrocked  to  the  bent  knee. 

The  next  verse  intimates  why  the  boys  were  wiser; 

there  was  a  fire  lighting,  and  a  pot  to  boil.     As  their 

observer  leaves  them,  the  whole  party  are  awaiting  the 

supreme  moment,  circle-wise,  they  lying  flat  while  their 

dog  sits  upright  in  their  midst.     Going,  he  gives  the 

touch  of  exquisite  suggestion  by  which  these  children 

of  the  barren  soil  are  united  with  those  others  at  play 

among  the  apples. 

I  turned  and  looked  on  heaven  awhile,  where  now 
The  moor-faced  sunset  broadened  with  red  light  ; 

Threw  high  aloft  a  go/den  bough, 

And  seemed  the  desert  of  the  night 
Far  down  with  mellow  orchards  to  endow. 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  c>  CRAFTSMAN    253 

Take  it  merely  as  a  description, — the  significance  of  the 
one  word  "  moor-faced,"  the  beauty  both  in  expression 
and  in  idea  of  the  whole  verse,  and  particularly  of  its 
central  thought  and  phrase, — here  are  things  which  for 
pure  poetry  it  would  be  hard  to  match  ;  and  for  full 
appreciation  of  the  stanza  you  have  still  to  consider  its 
wealth  of  allegorical  suggestion,  to  which  hardly  a  word 
fails  to  contribute.  And  yet,  for  all  its  many  beauties, 
its  sustained  penetrativeness,  its  astounding  concentra- 
tion, the  general  effect  of  The  Orchard  and  the  Heath 
is  not  of  a  poem,  so  much  as  of  brilliant  and  highly  poeti- 
cal verse  perpetually  touching  poetry.  And  perhaps 
the  cause  of  this  is  to  be  traced  to  what  might  be  called 
the  negative  attitude  of  the  poet.  Meredith's  faithful- 
ness to  the  object,  his  stern,  unyielding  self-effacement, 
defeat  their  end — so  far,  that  is,  as  poetry,  pure  and 
simple,  was  their  end.  One  after  another  the  impres- 
sions are  caught,  held,  and  presented  in  their  essence ; 
but  fully  to  weld  them  together  there  was  needed  a 
determining,  a  contributive  element  of  personal  emotion, 
the  feeling  of  the  observer  not  checked,  but  overflowing  ; 
and  this  he  will  not  give.  No  doubt,  in  Meredith's  eyes, 
the  poetic  unity  of  the  piece — the  root  idea  towards 
which  his  emotion,  checked  in  its  apprehension  of  the 
separate  images,  spontaneously  directs  itself — is  found 
in  reference  to  the  all-embracing  spiritual  unity  of 
Nature  or  Earth,  and  the  charm  of  the  theme  is  in  the 
linking  two  different  manifestations  of  the  single  Spirit. 
But  then  there  is  a  point  of  view — and  there  is  reason 
for  thinking  that  it  is  a  view  the  poet  shares — from 
which  we  may  say  that  the  theme  of  all  his  poems  is 
the  same ;  and  if  we  take  the  piece  as  a  composition 
complete  in  itself  to  be  judged  individually,  we  are 
compelled  to  admit  that  this  ultimate  emotional  unity 
is  presupposed  rather  than  expressed  in  it.     And  after 


254  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

all  it  is  by  what  it  expresses,  not  by  what  it  pre- 
supposes, that  a  work  of  art  has  to  be  judged.  Thus 
of  The  Orchard  and  the  Heath  we  may  say  with  justice, 
what  may  be  said  more  or  less  justly  of  almost  all 
Meredith's  compositions,  that  its  true  poetic  quality 
only  appears  when  the  whole  of  his  poetical  work  is 
made  its  background.  Meredith's  work  lacks  tone, 
lacks  atmosphere,  because,  while  he  seems  to  be  asking 
attention  to  a  series  of  separate  episodes,  he  is  really 
labouring  all  the  time  at  one  vast  canvas,  seeing  every 
detail  in  relation  to  a  central  subject,  and  relying  upon 
the  same  vision  in  his  reader. 

But  let  us  indicate  some  other  among  those  fascinat- 
ing traits  already  alluded  to  as  springing  from  Mere- 
dith's intellectual  supremacy  and  mastery  of  his  craft. 
Putting  his  pretensions  as  a  poet  on  one  side,  viewing 
him  merely  as  a  great  literary  executant,  what  wealth 
and  diversity  of  achievement  do  we  not  find  in  his 
verse  !  There  is  The  Ballad  of  Fair  Ladies  in  Revolt,  as 
pointed  a  discussion  of  the  burning  question  of  the  hour 
as  any  one  would  wish  to  see,  the  whole  cloaked  in  a 
delicate  veil  of  irony  and  humour,  an  assumed  serious- 
ness in  the  form  giving  their  full  effect  to  both,  a  genuine 
seriousness  in  the  matter  held  always  in  reserve  and 
making  itself  indisputably  felt  at  last — who  but  Meredith 
could  have  reared  so  complicated  a  structure,  or  devised 
so  superb  a  combination  of  trickery  and  wisdom? 
There  is  Jump~to-Glory  Jane,  in  which  the  more  fan- 
tastic element  runs  riot  (a  certain  spasmodic  impulsive- 
ness peculiar  to  some  kinds  of  religious  proselytism 
represented  emblematically).  There  is  The  Last  Con- 
tention, where  wit  winks  under  the  mask  of  dignity, 
the  Comic  Spirit  inculcating  temperance.  There  is 
The  Empty  Purse,  in  which,  having  adopted  the 
criminal  role  of  preacher,  by  confessing  his  crime  the 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  &  CRAFTSMAN   255 

author  would  fain  escape  the  penalty  of  it,  and  dodges 
condescension,  half  by  his  perpetual  waggery,  half  by 
fastening  upon  an  object  who,  being  himself  admittedly 
descended  to  the  last  rung  of  the  ladder,  puts  the  very 
idea  of  condescension  out  of  count.  There  is  The 
Nuptials  of  Attila,  summarising  in  itself  so  nobly  all 
those  rare  powers  of  cut  and  thrust  and  thunderous 
assault,  the  fighting  qualities  of  Meredith's  style,  that 
the  weapons  of  critical  theory  go  down  before  it  and 
it  acclaims  itself  triumphantly  for  a  true  poem,  unassail- 
able. Then  again,  in  lesser  works,  the  same  incisive 
powers  find  sculpturesque  employment,  carving  statues 
of  Bellerophon,  Periander,  or  bracing,  now  a  great 
politician,  now  a  general,  to  still  more  strenuous  en- 
deavour, whether  in  the  cause  of  patriotism  or  the 
wider  cause  of  humanity  and  truth.  Add  to  these  the 
many  pieces  where  the  same  clean,  crisp  handling  is 
combined  with  a  mood  nearer  to  tenderness — as  in 
Earth  and  a  Wedded  Woman — or — as  in  The  Ap- 
peasement of  Demeter —  becomes  servant  to  laughter; 
consider  the  many  sonnets  in  which  it  is  used,  some- 
what as  Milton  used  it,  either  to  drive  disregard  of 
misunderstanding  contemptuously  home,  or  to  stigma- 
tise with  sharp  satire  some  false  or  imperfect  view  of 
life  or  way  of  living,  contrasting  it  with  the  true  ;  and 
finally — for  it  is  time  to  approach  the  most  difficult, 
most  presumptuous  part  of  our  task  :  having  set  out  to 
estimate  Meredith's  poetical  achievement,  we  have  yet 
to  sound  that  note  of  true  appreciation,  on  which  for 
the  time  being  criticism  may  worthily  and  fitly  rest — 
finally,  then,  recall  to  mind  that  in  tracing  this  wide 
diversity  of  accomplishment,  we  have  confessed  our- 
selves mere  wanderers  upon  the  outskirts  of  the  poet's 
heart  and  mind. 

Turning  the  preceding  pages,  the  reader  may  reflect 


256  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

with  astonishment  how  many  are  the  disparaging  words 
which  they  contain  ;  and  the  reflection  must  bring  not 
only  astonishment  to  the  reader  of  them,  but  shame 
upon  their  author,  were  it  not  for  his  consoling  intuition 
that  there  are  some  spirits  whom  it  is  at  least  less  pre- 
sumptuous to  blame  than  to  praise.  In  concluding, 
let  us  quote  a  poem  before  which  the  detractor  remains 

mute : — 

I 

Last  night  returning  from  my  twilight  walk 

I  met  the  grey  mist  Death,  whose  eyeless  brow 

Was  bent  on  me,  and  from  his  hand  of  chalk 

He  reached  me  flowers  as  from  a  withered  bough  : 

O  Death,  what  bitter  nosegays  givest  thou  ! 

II 

Death  said,  I  gather,  and  pursued  his  way. 
Another  stood  by  me,  a  shape  in  stone, 
Sword-hacked  and  iron-stained,  with  breasts  of  clay, 
And  metal  veins  that  sometimes  fiery  shone: 
O  Life,  how  naked  and  how  hard  when  known  ! 

Ill 

Life  said,  As  thou  hast  carved  me,  such  am  I. 
Then  memory,  like  the  nightjar  on  the  pine, 
And  sightless  hope,  a  woodlark  in  night  sky, 
Joined  notes  of  Death  and  Life  till  night's  decline  : 
Of  Death,  of  Life,  those  inwound  notes  are  mine. 

Here  the  atmosphere  is  flawless,  and  it  is  an  atmosphere 
with  which  Meredith  has  done  little  to  familiarise  us, 
the  atmosphere  of  personal  regret :  a  regret  measured, 
grave,  and,  as  Meredith  always  must  be,  watchful  of  truth  : 
but  a  regret  which,  just  because  of  the  truth  it  rests  on, 
extends  from  the  past  to  the  future,  and  puts  both  under 
a  common  veil  of  sadness.  The  warrior  has  laid  his 
shield  and  sword  aside,  and,  in  an  interval  of  that  heroic 
contest  in  which  his  mightier  self  stands  revealed,  for 
once  the  lesser  self  speaks  and  speaks  perfectly.     In 


THE  POEMS— ARTIST  c>  CRAFTSMAN    257 

criticism  of  Meredith's  first  published  verses,  we  sug- 
gested that  there  was  less  of  poetry  in  the  work  than  in 
the  man.  And  perhaps  we  may  best  grasp  the  sum  of 
his  achievement  by  reflecting  that  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  that  has  always  been  true.  The  greatness  of  his 
achievement  is  inseparable  from  the  greatness  of  his 
aim.  If  his  command  of  the  poetry  which  looks  to 
words  for  its  expression  has  seemed  too  conscious,  too 
mechanical,  the  reason  is  that  his  life  has  been  devoted 
to  a  great  creative  act,  with  which  the  spontaneous  ex- 
pression of  passing  emotion,  even  such  expression  as 
that  which  he  allows  himself  in  the  noble  lines  just 
quoted,  must  often  have  been  at  variance.  His  aim 
has  been  not  merely  to  find  a  fair  form  for  personal 
impressions,  but  rather — fronting  truth,  and  subduing 
before  it  the  misgiving,  the  reluctance,  of  the  weaker 
natural  man — to  create  in  himself,  and,  having  created  in 
himself,  to  express  and  so  hand  on  to  others,  that  form 
of  emotional  response  to  it,  which,  whether  expressed  in 
thought  or  word  or  deed,  contains  and  summarises  the 
ultimate  artistic  ideal,  shows  truth  clothing  itself  in 
beauty.  And  thus  that  conscious  effort  which  appears 
in  his  works  seen  separately  is  the  result,  as  we  have 
said,  of  resolute  self-obliteration  before  wider  horizons, 
and  it  is  only  by  sympathetic  understanding  of  this  wide 
range  of  view  that  any  just  estimate  of  Meredith's  poetic 
achievement  can  be  attempted.  His  work,  we  believe, 
is  greatest  when  he  is  most  directly  dealing  with  Nature 
and  Man  in  the  light  of  the  Spirit  which  unites  them  ; 
and  the  greatness  of  his  work  as  a  whole  is  in  the 
gathered,  the  cumulative  weight  of  living  conviction, 
with  which  there  rises  from  it  the  sense  of  this  spiritual 
unity  and  of  all  that  it  implies.  We  saw  in  an  earlier 
chapter  that  for  those  familiar  with  his  thought  there  is 
one  symbol,  the  word  Earth,  in  which  this  life  and  truth 
s 


258  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

are  summarised  :  to  have  found  that  symbol,  to  have 
endowed  it  with  the  meaning,  which — since  Meredith 
has  written — it  must  carry  as  long  as  English  lasts,  this 
is  of  itself  an  achievement  in  pure  poetry  which  places 
him  among  the  greatest  of  the  sons  of  men. 


CHAPTER    XVIII 
DIANA  OF  THE   CROSSWAYS 

CHAPTERS  I-XXVI  of  Diana  of  the  Crossways 
appeared  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  1884.  The 
whole,  consisting  of  forty-three  chapters,  was  published, 
and  three  editions  of  it  exhausted,  in  the  following 
year.  Diana  Warwick's  history  is  founded  on  that  of 
Caroline  Norton,  one  of  the  three  beautiful  grand- 
daughters of  Sheridan,  immensely  admired  in  the 
society  of  her  day,  and  popular  as  poet  and  novelist. 
Caroline  Norton's  marriage  was  unhappy,  and  her 
husband  brought  a  divorce  suit  against  her  in  connec- 
tion with  Lord  Melbourne,  who  was  Prime  Minister 
at  the  time.  This  action  was  not  successful.  She 
was  later  accused  of  having  betrayed  to  The  Times 
a  secret  confided  to  her  by  Sidney  Herbert,  one  of  her 
most  ardent  admirers,  to  the  effect  that  Sir  Robert 
Peel  had  resolved  on  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  ;  the 
premature  disclosure  of  this  resolve  led  to  a  Cabinet 
crisis.  After  Diana  of  the  Crossways  was  published, 
the  charge  was  examined  and  proved  to  be  false,  and 
Meredith  has  prefaced  the  1890  and  subsequent 
editions  of  the  book  by  the  following  note :  "  A  lady 
of  distinction  for  wit  and  beauty,  the  daughter  of  an 
illustrious  Irish  house,  came  under  the  shadow  of  a 
calumny.  It  has  lately  been  examined  and  exposed  as 
baseless.  The  story  of  Diana  of  the  Crossways  is  to  be 
read  as  fiction." 

259 


26o  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Diana  of  the  Crossways  is  the  most  popular  of  Mere- 
dith's   novels.      Why   it    should    stand    first    with   the 
student  of  Meredith's  writings  it  is  difficult  to  perceive. 
The  reason  of  its  wider  popularity  may  be  discovered 
more  readily.      First,  there  is  its  connection  with  the 
well-known  story  just  referred  to  ;  secondly,  it  is,  in 
relation  to  the  rest    of  the  novels,  conventional,  and 
clever  rather  than   profound.     When  the  story  opens, 
Diana    is    nineteen — beautiful,    brilliant,    and    already 
with    a   great   reputation    for   wit    inherited    from    her 
Irish   father.     We  see  her   first    at    a  ball  in  Dublin, 
where  she  and  an  old  General,  the  hero  of  the  evening, 
form    the   centre    of    interest ;    the    General    says    of 
her,  "  She  makes  everything  in  the  room  dust  round 
a    blazing   jewel."     Here    she    meets    her    childhood's 
friend,   Lady  Dunstane,   who,  with   her   husband,  Sir 
Lukin,  has  been  in  the  General's  suite  in  India.     The 
Dunstanes  introduce  a  Mr.  Redworth  to  Diana.     He 
falls    straightway   in   love   with    her,  but,  being    of   a 
practical  mind,  at  once  begins  to  calculate  whether  his 
income  would    be    sufficient    to    support    this    bird    of 
paradise,  and  decides  in  the  negative.     Diana  goes  on 
a  round  of  visits,  and  her  beauty  causes  her  to  be  pur- 
sued by  unwelcome  attentions  ;  even  at  Copsley,  when 
she  is  visiting  Emma  Dunstane,  the   inflammable  Sir 
Lukin   has   to   make  acquaintance  with  the  "  sheaf  of 
arrows  in  her  eyes."     She  leaves  the  house,  and  soon 
after  announces  to  Lady  Dunstane  her  engagement  to 
a  certain  Mr.  Warwick  ;   Emma  suspects  that  she  has 
rushed  into  a  loveless  match.     Mr.  Redworth's  railway 
speculations  are  prospering,  and  at  the  moment  of  the 
announcement  he  finds  himself  in  a  position  to  have 
provided  for  her  adequately.     Mr.  and   Mrs.  Warwick 
arrive  on  a  visit  to  Lady  Dunstane  at  Copsley ;  he  is  a 
"  gentlemanly  official  "  without  sense  of  humour,  and 


DIANA   OF   THE   CROSSWAYS         261 

Diana's  friend  can  in  no  way  account  for  the  marriage. 
Presently  there  are  rumours  of  dissension,  and  Diana's 
name  is  coupled  with  that  of  the  elderly  Lord  Dannis- 
burgh,  an  eminent  member  of  the  Cabinet.  The 
friendship  has  been  encouraged  by  Mr.  Warwick  for  the 
sake  of  its  worldly  advantages ;  but  he  is  jealous,  and 
Diana  reckless  and  imprudent.  He  takes  legal  pro- 
ceedings for  a  divorce,  and  Diana,  longing  to  be  free, 
prepares  to  leave  the  country.  Lady  Dunstane,  by  her 
emissary  Mr.  Redworth,  intercepts  her  at  the  Cross- 
ways,  her  Sussex  home,  and  persuades  her  to  face  the 
prosecution.  The  suit  is  dismissed  ;  the  plaintiff  has 
not  proved  his  charge.  But  there  are  signs  that  Mr. 
Warwick  is  about  to  put  the  law  in  motion  to  reclaim 
his  wife.  To  avoid  his  advances  Diana  travels  with  some 
friends.  On  the  Nile  she  meets  the  Hon.  Percy  Dacier, 
a  nephew  of  Lord  Dannisburgh  and  a  rising  politician  ; 
Mr.  Redworth,  who  is  now  in  Parliament,  joins  their 
party  for  a  time.  At  Rovio,  later  in  the  year,  she  and 
Percy  Dacier,  in  an  early  morning  on  the  mountains, 
come  within  sight  of  a  passion  new  in  the  lives  of  both. 
On  her  return  to  London  Diana  begins  novel-writing. 
Her  first  book  runs  through  many  editions ;  on  the 
strength  of  it  she  sets  up  an  extravagant  establishment 
and  shines  as  a  hostess ;  her  dinner  parties,  at  which 
Percy  Dacier  is  a  constant  guest,  are  famous  for  wit 
and  wine.  Lord  Dannisburgh  dies ;  Diana,  in  fulfil- 
ment of  his  wish,  watches  for  a  night  beside  his  body, 
and  is  joined  during  her  vigil  by  Percy  Dacier.  The 
name  of  the  beautiful  Mrs.  Warwick  is  once  more  in 
the  gossips'  mouths,  and  when  the  hero  of  Diana's 
second  novel,  "The  Young  Minister  of  State,"  is  recog- 
nised as  Mr.  Dacier,  tongues  begin  to  wag  about  the 
friendship  between  him  and  the  authoress.  She  is  dis- 
appointed in   the  pecuniary  results  of  the  book  (the 


262  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

success  of  the  first  was  due  mainly  to  Mr.  Redworth's 
advertisement  of  it);  she  is  living  far  beyond  her 
income,  and  begins  to  speculate  wildly  in  gold  mines. 
Mr.  Warwick  is  said  to  be  dying:  to  escape  his  de- 
puted solicitations  Diana  goes  to  a  little  French  water- 
ing-place near  Caen.  She  is  followed  by  Percy  Dacier, 
who  now  openly  declares  his  passion  for  her.  She 
checks  him,  and  forces  him  to  consider  the  scandal 
his  visit  may  occasion  ;  but  his  action  has  revealed 
to  her  the  true  state  of  her  own  feelings.  She 
returns  to  London  and  sets  to  work  on  a  third  novel, 
but  her  financial  entanglements  are  bewildering : 
perfect  dinners  are  swamping  her  income.  Dacier 
comes  to  her  constantly  for  counsel ;  she  becomes 
his  right  hand  in  his  work  ;  she  believes  that  she 
has  her  feelings  under  control.  Dacier  hears  that 
Mr.  Warwick  is  actually  taking  legal  proceedings  to 
secure  the  restoration  of  his  wife.  He  comes  to  Diana, 
and  begs  her  to  throw  in  her  lot  with  his :  he  is  sure 
of  her  love.  After  a  struggle  she  agrees  to  meet  him 
and  start  the  following  evening  for  France.  Her 
boxes  are  at  the  door  when  Mr.  Redworth  appears,  and 
tells  her  she  must  come  with  him  at  once  to  Lady 
Dunstane,  whose  life  hangs  in  the  balance.  Dacier 
waits  at  the  station,  sure  of  Diana.  Till  within  a  few 
minutes  of  the  starting  of  the  train  his  confidence  does 
not  waver.  The  train  starts,  and  he  has  been  fooled. 
On  inquiry  at  Diana's  house  he  learns  the  cause  of  her 
absence.  He  follows  her  to  Copsley,  but  no  allusion 
is  made  by  either  to  the  foiled  project.  When  Emma 
Dunstane  recovers,  Diana  makes  full  confession  of  it 
to  her.  After  some  time  Diana  returns  to  London 
and  attempts  to  take  up  her  old  literary  life.  She  and 
Dacier  meet  on  their  former  terms  of  good-fellowship : 
his  admiration  for  her  is  greater  than  ever.     Redworth 


DIANA   OF   THE   CROSSWAYS         263 

watches  their  friendship  clear-eyed  :  he  thinks  well  of 
Dacier.  After  one  of  Diana's  most  brilliant  evenings 
Percy  Dacier  returns  to  her  late  and  alone.  He  has 
ostensibly  come  to  confide  to  her  a  great  political 
secret  which  will  not  be  published  for  a  month.  Diana 
is  excited  by  the  news :  Dacier  seizes  his  moment  and 
embraces  her.  She  keenly  resents  the  liberty  he  has 
taken  and  upbraids  him.  He  attempts  to  win  her 
consent  to  a  date  for  their  union  ;  he  leaves  her  smart- 
ing with  a  sense  of  dignity  lost.  Mr.  Tonans,  a  famous 
newspaper  editor,  has  sometimes  taunted  her  with  over- 
estimating her  knowledge  of  political  intrigue.  She  is 
in  urgent  need  of  money.  She  sells  her  secret  to 
Tonans.  Dacier  has  gone  home  in  a  whirl  of  rap- 
turous feeling.  He  wakes  in  the  morning  to  read  his 
chief's  confidence  in  the  daily  paper  ;  and  he  has  been 
trusted,  and  no  other.  They  must  have  been  over- 
heard. In  bewilderment  he  goes  to  Diana.  She  has 
sold  the  secret  without  being  aware  that  it  was  of  any 
value !  Dacier  leaves  her,  and  shuts  the  door  on  his 
connection  with  Diana.  "  To  her  it  was  the  plucking 
of  life  out  of  her  breast."  Dacier's  reflections  cause 
him  to  engage  himself  the  same  day  to  Miss  Asper,  an 
heiress  who  has  been  piously  constant  to  him.  Diana's 
husband  dies  two  days  before  the  marriage.  Under 
the  blow  of  Dacier's  desertion  Diana  has  herself 
come  near  to  death.  Emma  Dunstane  wins  her  back 
to  life  and  to  a  renewal  of  her  former  interests.  Red- 
worth  has  never  faltered  in  feeling :  "  He  believed  in 
the  soul  of  Diana."  She  rewards  him  for  his  long, 
patient  waiting  by  giving  him  her  hand. 

It  has  been  necessary  to  recapitulate  the  main  events 
of  the  story  as  a  basis  for  comment.  In  enumerating 
them  it  would  have  been  as  little  to  the  point  to  include 
Meredith's  explanation  of  them  as  our  own  criticism. 


264  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

We  may  now  clear  the  ground  by  recording  an  inter- 
pretation of  Diana's  story,  which,  if  obviously  extrava- 
gant, must  at  least  arrest  attention  by  its  originality. 
We  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  hear  of  an  ardent 
Meredithian  who  believes  that  he  and  Meredith  alone 
have  the  key  to  the  story.  Diana,  he  says,  is  the 
feminine  Egoist ;  and,  with  a  subtlety  never  for  one 
moment  approached  in  the  book  of  that  name,  she 
is  painted  as  such  without  a  flaw.  We  would  submit 
that  the  artist's  work  is  revealed,  by  this  criticism,  less 
in  its  intention  than  in  its  result.  Diana  is  brilliant, 
but  can  it  be  denied  that  she  is  self-centred  ?  The 
object  of  her  marriage  with  Mr.  Warwick  is  to  escape 
from  unpleasant  attentions :  it  is  not  suggested  that 
she  loves  him.  After  his  lawsuit  it  is  natural  she 
should  object  to  return  to  him  ;  but  what  sign  does  she 
show  of  being  able  to  forego  conventional  advantages? 
She  begins,  after  a  brief  trial  of  life  in  lodgings,  to 
entertain  lavishly  and  make  herself  the  centre  of  a 
circle.  At  this  point  of  our  work  it  is  not  necessary  to 
dwell  on  Meredith's  views  as  to  the  right  relation  be- 
tween effort  and  expenditure  ;  but  Diana,  his  favourite, 
oversteps  the  limits  of  her  income  from  the  first,  and 
is  represented  as  largely  employed  in  juggling  with 
debit  and  credit.  When  Dacier  asks  what  possible 
object  she  could  have  had  in  selling  him  to  Tonans,  she 
pleads  her  dire  need  of  money.  Does  Meredith  really 
intend  us  to  think  that  a  woman  of  Diana's  intellect 
could  have  placed  the  friend,  in  whose  interests  she  was 
entertaining,  in  such  a  position  ?  Here  we  touch  the 
central  falsity  of  the  tale.  We  are  not  concerned  in 
discussing  whether  Diana  would  have  been  right  or 
wrong  to  go  away  with  Dacier.  The  point  is,  she  was 
saved  fortuitously  from  carrying  out  her  intention.  At 
their  next  meeting  Meredith  adroitly  takes  advantage 


DIANA   OF   THE   CROSSWAYS         265 

of  the  fact  that  Emma  Dunstane  is  in  danger  of  her 
life ;  it  is  right,  at  such  a  moment,  that  their  plans 
should  recede  into  the  background.  But  what  is 
not  right  is  that  Diana  should  have  made  confession  to 
Emma  of  her  salvation  from  sin,  and  assume,  on  her 
return  to  Dacier,  a  superiority  to  which  no  action  of 
her  own  has  entitled  her.  It  is  at  least  a  proof  of 
Dacier's  love,  which  Meredith  would  represent  as 
worthless,  that  he  reinstates  her  in  his  regard  and 
esteems  her  even  more  highly  than  before  his  humilia- 
tion. And  now  we  come  to  the  point  at  which 
Meredith  attempts  to  justify  his  heroine.  He  has  laid 
much  stress  on  the  beauty  of  Diana's  aloofness.  He 
suggests  that  Dacier  returns  late  at  night  with  his  great 
political  news,  half  in  the  hope  that  her  excitement  may 
break  down  her  defences.  He  tells  his  news  and  pleads 
his  right  to  a  caress  ;  he  gives  it  unallowed.  "  They 
were  speechless.  '  You  see,  Tony,  my  dearest,  I  am 
flesh  and  blood  after  all.'  '  You  drive  me  to  be  ice  and 
door-bolts ! '  Her  eyes  broke  over  him  reproachfully. 
'  It  is  not  so  much  to  grant,'  he  murmured.  '  It  changes 
everything  between  us.'  '  Not  me.  It  binds  me  the 
faster.'  '  It  makes  me  a  loathsome  hypocrite.'  '  But, 
Tony  !  is  it  so  much  ? '  '  Not  if  you  value  it  low.'  '  But 
how  long  do  you  keep  me  in  this  rag-puppet's  state  of 
suspension  ? '  'Patience.'  '  Dangling  and  swinging  day 
and  night ! '  '  The  rag-puppet  shall  be  animated  and 
repaid  if  I  have  life.  I  wish  to  respect  my  hero.  Have 
a  little  mercy.  Our  day  will  come ;  perhaps  as  wonder- 
fully as  this  wonderful  news.  My  friend,  drop  your 
hands.  Have  you  forgotten  who  I  am  ?  I  want  to 
think,  Percy  ! '  '  But  you  are  mine.'  '  You  are  abusing 
your  own.'  '  No,  by  heaven  ! '  '  Worse,  dear  friend  ; 
you  are  lowering  yourself  to  the  woman  who  loves 
you.'    '  You  must  imagine  me  superhuman.'    '  I  worship 


266  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

you — or  did.'  '  Be  reasonable,  Tony.  What  harm  ? 
Surely  a  trifle  of  recompense  ?  Just  to  let  me  feel  I 
live !  You  own  you  love  me.  Then  I  am  your 
lover.'  '  My  dear  friend  Percy,  when  I  have  consented 
to  be  your  paramour,  this  kind  of  treatment  of  me  will 
not  want  apologies.'"  Is  it  not  difficult  to  adopt  the 
position  Meredith  requires  in  this  matter,  in  regard  to 
a  woman  who  has  never  gone  back  on  her  consent  to 
an  immediate  and  lifelong  alliance  with  the  man  she 
addresses  ?  Diana's  husband  is  dying,  and  any  forcing 
of  the  situation  at  the  moment  is  naturally  repugnant 
to  her.  But  it  is  hard  to  see  how  morality  or  good 
taste  can  so  suddenly  be  called  into  question.  Con- 
sideration of  the  former  would  have  necessitated  a  clear 
statement  from  Diana  as  to  her  error  in  the  past  and 
her  ideas  for  the  future ;  the  latter,  a  modification  of 
her  public  intimacy  with  Dacier.  Moreover  Dacier's 
fault  should  be  viewed  in  the  light  of  the  emotional 
strain  to  which  Diana  has  been  subjecting  him. 
Meredith's  suggestion  of  grossness  in  his  action  is 
surely  the  flimsiest  of  excuses  for  Diana's  subsequent 
betrayal. 

And  in  regard  to  the  actual  betrayal  of  the  secret, 
we  should  not  wish  to  suggest  that  it  is  an  incident 
which  Meredith  might  not  have  incorporated  convinc- 
ingly, but  rather  that,  in  its  context,  it  destroys  the  foun- 
dation on  which  his  whole  structure  is  reared.  It  has 
been  Meredith's  contention  throughout  that  Diana's 
powers  and  intellect  are  exceptional,  that  uncongenial 
marriage  restraints  and  the  barriers  of  conventional 
routine  are  intolerable  where  she  is  concerned.  He 
would  have  us  believe  that  she  is  capable  of  desiring 
comradeship  rather  than  love-making.  A  lover  comes  to 
her,  believing  in  her  power  to  appreciate  political  issues, 
and  confides  to  her  a  secret  of  great  national  import- 


DIANA   OF   THE    CROSSWAYS        267 

ance.  We  are  not  now  concerned  with  the  purity  of 
Dacier's  motives,  but  merely  with  Diana's  capacity  to 
understand  the  nature  of  the  gift  he  has  brought.  She 
uses  it  as  a  trinket  to  be  toyed  with  and  sold.  There 
are  moments  indeed  when,  in  comparing  the  thirty- 
first  chapter,  "  Political  News,"  with  the  thirty-fourth,  we 
are  tempted  to  believe  the  latter  a  practical  joke,  not 
excluding  its  title,  "  How  the  Criminal's  Judge  may  be 
Love's  Criminal."  Set  side  by  side  with  each  other,  the 
discrepancies  between  Diana's  statements,  made  but 
twenty-four  hours  apart,  are  too  much  of  a  strain  on 
the  reader.  In  the  first  scene  she  exclaims:  "'And  you 
were  charged  with  the  secret  all  the  evening  and  be- 
trayed not  a  sign  !  .  .  .  The  proposal  is  ?  No  more 
compromises!'  'Total!'  Diana  clapped  hands;  and 
her  aspect  of  enthusiasm  was  intoxicating.  ...  '  We 
two  are  a  month  in  advance  of  all  England.  .  .  .'"  In 
the  second  she  pleads :  " '  You  did  not  name  it  as  a 
secret.  I  did  not  imagine  it  to  be  a  secret  of  immense, 
immediate  importance.' "  And  in  reply  to  his  amazed 
shout  of  "  What  ?  "  goes  on  to  say :  " '  I  had  not  a  sus- 
picion of  mischief.  ...  I  thought  it  was  a  secret  of 
a  day.  I  don't  think  you — no,  you  did  not  tell  me  to 
keep  it  secret.  A  word  from  you  would  have  been 
enough.  I  was  in  extremity ! '  Step  by  step  she  re- 
cedes before  Dacier's  interrogation  :  '  I  did  not  imagine 
he  would  use  it — make  use  of  it — as  he  has  done.  .  .  . 
No  exact  sum  was  named  ;  thousands  were  hinted.' " 
May  we  not  fairly  demand  of  our  author  a  choice  be- 
tween two  alternatives  ?  Either  Diana  is  a  fool,  passing 
even  the  "  ordinary  woman  "  in  her  folly  (she  can  enter- 
tain the  idea  of  being  paid  thousands  of  pounds  for 
information  of  negligible  importance),  or  she  is  prov- 
ing beyond  all  refutation  that  the  political  basis  of  her 
intercourse  with  Dacier  is  a  sham.     Diana,  Meredith 


268  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

admits,  has  made  a  mistake  ;  but  he  harps  on  the  in- 
sufficiency of  her  lover's  affection,  and  when  Dacier 
goes  out  and  closes  the  door  on  Diana,  turns  from  her 
intensity  to  Constance  Asper's  glacial  fidelity,  we  are 
given  to  understand  that  his  error  in  the  eyes  of  his 
author  is  unforgiveable.  Worldly-wise  and  narrow- 
minded  he  certainly  was,  but  why  should  this  ex- 
perience with  Diana  Warwick  be  expected  to  have 
enlarged  his  horizon  ?  A  reversion  to  Constance  Asper 
appears  to  us  the  only  natural  outcome  of  it. 

It  need  not  be  said,  since  Diana  is  a  Celt  and  one  of 
her  author's  favourites,  that  she  is  a  mouthpiece  for  much 
of  Meredith's  insight.  Her  sallies  deserve  the  fullest 
quotation  ;  the  Introductory  chapter  alone  is  a  treasure- 
house  of  wit  and  of  wisdom.  But  it  has  seemed  best 
to  set  aside  in  this  summary  all  considerations  not  bear- 
ing on  what  in  this  case  has  appeared  to  us  of  primary 
importance,  the  consistency  of  the  plot.  It  is  clear, 
of  course,  that  Meredith  means  us,  as  was  suggested  in 
an  earlier  chapter,  to  conceive  of  his  heroine  as  Red- 
worth  conceives  of  her :  "  Redworth  believed  in  the 
soul  of  Diana.  For  him  it  burned,  and  it  was  a 
celestial  radiance  about  her,  unquenched  by  her  shift- 
ing fortunes,  her  wilfulness,  and,  it  might  be,  errors. 
She  was  a  woman  and  weak  ;  that  is,  not  trained  for 
strength.  She  was  a  soul ;  therefore  perpetually  point- 
ing to  growth  in  purification."  This  is  what  is  intended, 
but  is  it  what  is  achieved  ?  We  think  not.  The  events 
and  the  psychology  of  the  book  appear  to  us,  not  only 
not  interwoven,  but  spun  of  materials  so  different  in 
texture  that  they  could  not  combine.  The  historical 
figure  Meredith  chose  for  his  heroine  had  a  tear  in  her 
dress.  Every  machine  in  his  factory  is  set  in  motion 
to  provide  a  patch  for  it.  But  the  new  material,  com- 
pounded of  philosophical  speculation  and  championship 


DIANA   OF   THE   CROSSWAYS         269 

of  wider  opportunities  for  women,  rich  and  rare  though 
it  be,  is  a  misfit ;  "  the  rent  is  made  worse." 

Diana's  charming  personality,  her  recklessness,  her 
passion  for  Dacier,  her  life-history,  including  the  selling 
of  the  secret,  were  elements  well  within  Meredith's  power 
to  combine  without  injuring  our  love  for  his  heroine. 
But  to  this  end  the  reader  should  have  been  caught  by 
the  heart,  not  by  the  head.  To  start,  and  continue  to 
harp,  on  the  note  of  Diana's  wit  and  insight,  her  scorn 
of  sentiment  and  sentimental  romance,  her  clear  vision 
of  the  needs  of  her  sex,  her  political  views — in  short, 
her  philosophy — was  to  set  a  tune  with  which  the 
incidents  could  not  be  harmonised.  To  have  prefaced 
The  Tragic  Comedians  with  a  championship  of  valiancy 
in  women,  with  Clotilde  as  sole  embodiment  of  the 
virtue,  would  have  been  to  attempt  a  parallel  task. 


CHAPTER   XIX 

ONE   OF   OUR   CONQUERORS   AND   LORD 
ORMONT   AND    HIS   AMINTA 

WHENEVER  he  is  dealing  with  problems  con- 
nected with  marriage,  Meredith  assumes  the 
existence  of  the  strongest  prejudice  against  unconven- 
tional action  in  the  mind  of  his  public.  To  the  present- 
day  reader  he  appears  to  over-estimate  its  force,  and  to 
be  led  to  undue  lengths  in  combating  it.  Much  may 
yet  need  to  be  done  "  to  right  the  loaded  scales " ;  but 
women  refusing  the  conditions  which  Mr.  Warwick, 
Lord  Ormont,  or  Fleetwood  attempt  to  impose  on  their 
wives,  would  not  be  regarded  as  social  rebels  to-day. 
So  far  at  least  circumstances  have  changed,  and  we  may 
think  that  Meredith,  to  whom  much  of  the  improvement 
is  due,  should  be  fully  aware  of  it.  However  this  may 
be,  the  many  desirable  changes  which  the  last  fifty  years 
have  worked  in  public  opinion  have  brought  one  effect 
with  them  that  Meredith  would  certainly  wish  to  ignore. 
A  type  of  mind  has  arisen  which,  reacting  against  life- 
less constraints,  looks  on  all  social  convention  and 
contract  as  tyrannical,  and  wishes  to  regard  each 
individual  and  occurrence  as  something  unique,  to  be 
judged  on  its  private  and  personal  merits.  This  type 
has  no  place  in  the  "  honourable  minority"  whom  Mere- 
dith addresses.  In  them  a  social  consciousness,  a  staunch 
belief  in  society,  is  presumed,  in  addition  to  personal  sus- 

270 


LORD   ORMONT  271 

ceptibilities  ;  otherwise  the  possessors  of  those  sus- 
ceptibilities stand  marked  as  the  Comic  Spirit's  prey, 
Byron-like,  "illuminated  to  the  general  eye  as  the 
very  object  of  chase  and  doomed  quarry  of  the  thing 
obscure  to  them."  In  other  words,  if  we  can  see  nothing 
to  be  said  for  the  claims  of  Willoughby,  Lord  Ormont, 
and  Fleetwood,  if,  because  Clara,  Aminta,  and  Carinthia 
are  superior  to  their  lords,  we  do  not  feel  they  have 
incurred  heavy  obligation  by  their  vows,  we  are  not 
among  those  for  whom  Meredith  has  been  writing.  For, 
if  we  do  not  grant,  what  he,  as  a  root  supposition,  is 
granting,  the  existence  of  real  obstacles  to  his  heroines' 
freedom,  it  follows  inevitably  that  in  exposing  the  un- 
worthiness  of  his  heroes  he  should  seem  to  be  over- 
weighting his  case.  The  art  and  the  labour  he  expends 
to  justify  an  exception  presuppose  the  existence  of  a 
rule.  At  the  moments  when  he  asks  unconventional 
action  of  his  characters,  its  effectiveness  depends  upon 
the  rarity  of  its  occurrence.  "  When  we  find,"  he 
writes  of  one  of  the  finest  and  most  lovable  of  them, 
"a  man,  who  is  commonly  of  the  quickest  suscepti- 
bility to  ridicule  as  well  as  to  what  is  befitting,  careless 
of  exposure,  we  may  reflect  on  the  truthfulness  of 
feeling  by  which  he  is  drawn  to  pass  his  own  guard 
and  come  forth  in  his  nakedness."1  We  may  feel 
that,  in  the  face  of  Willoughby's  persistent  refusal  to 
deal  with  a  situation  that  has  been  pressed  on  his  at- 
tention, Vernon  might  honourably  have  come  to  some 
understanding  with  Clara  before  she  is  formally  released 
from  her  engagement.  But  in  Meredith's  hands,  Ver- 
non's honour  makes  a  still  more  strenuous  demand. 
Clara  is  at  last  released,  cast  by  her  father  into  her 
true  lover's  arms,  yet  he  refuses  to  forget  that  their  joy 
is  founded  on  failure,  and  that  its  price  must  be  paid. 

1   The  Tale  of  Chloe. 


272  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

"  It  was  hard  for  him,  for  both,  but  harder  for  the  man, 
to  restrain  their  particular  word  from  a  flight  to  heaven 
when  the  cage  door  stood  open  and  nature  beckoned, 
but  he  was  practised  in  self-mastery."1  And  it  is  be- 
cause the  word  is  not  spoken  then,  that  the  meeting  of 
two  lovers,  some  months  later,  on  the  slopes  of  Lake 
Constance,  is  looked  on  by  the  Comic  Muse  with  soft 
and  friendly  eyes.  No  problem  indeed  could  exist  for 
Clara,  Aminta,  and  Carinthia,  were  it  not  for  their 
recognition  of  a  standard  that  is  abstract  and  non- 
individual  :  and  this  standard  Weyburn,  in  vowing 
himself  to  Aminta,  openly  expresses  :  "  With  a  world 
against  us,"  he  says,  "  our  love  and  labour  are  constantly 
on  trial ;  we  must  have  great  hearts,  and  if  the  world  is 
hostile  we  are  not  to  blame  it.  In  the  nature  of  things 
it  could  not  be  otherwise.  My  own  soul,  we  have  to  see 
that  we  do — though  not  publicly,  not  insolently — offend 
good  citizenship.  But  we  believe — I  with  my  whole 
faith,  and  I  may  say  it  of  you — that  we  are  not  offend- 
ing Divine  Law.  You  are  the  woman  I  can  help  and 
join  with  ;  think  whether  you  can  tell  yourself  that  I 
am  the  man.  So  then  our  union  gives  us  powers  to 
make  amends  to  the  world."  "  Make  amends  to  the 
world "  ;  the  first  note,  and  the  last,  is  this  of  good 
citizenship.  This  is  the  court  of  appeal,  the  test  to 
which  individualistic  action  is  referred.  It  is  therefore 
significant  that  practically  the  whole  of  Meredith's  after 
treatment  of  the  pair  is  concerned  with  their  devotion 
to  their  great  school  and  its  striking  success.  Quick 
changes  in  feeling  come  of  the  blood,  not  of  the  brain, 
and  Meredith  has  small  tenderness  for  these.  The 
union  of  Matey  and  Aminta  is  long  delayed,  it  is 
to  be  brought  to  the  test  and  approved  ;  nevertheless, 
even    here,  a  note  of  warning  is  struck.     "  Neither  of 

1   The  Egoist. 


LORD   ORMONT  273 

them  quite  perceived  what  it  was  which  coloured  reason 
to  beauty,  or  what  so  convinced  their  intellects  when 
passion  spoke  louder." 

Lord  Ormont  and  his  Aminta,  published  in  1894,  ls 
much  simpler  in  style  than  One  of  our  Conquerors  ;  but, 
the  two  books  having  obvious  affinities  of  theme,  it  has 
seemed  natural  to  treat  them  together.  That  of  Lord 
Ormont  is  based  on  the  career  of  the  great  Earl  of 
Peterborough,  who  won  wide  fame  as  a  soldier  at 
Valencia,  but  was  recalled  by  his  country  in  1707  on 
account  of  his  high-handed  temper.  Privately  married 
to  the  famous  singer  Anastasia  Robinson  in  1722,  he 
did  not  publicly  acknowledge  her  as  his  wife  till  shortly 
before  his  death,  and  many  years  after  their  marriage. 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  Meredith's  critics  that  he  is 
without  rival  in  his  drawing  of  boys,  a  commonplace 
perhaps  too  readily  acceded  to.  As  to  the  degree  of 
his  success  in  the  representation  of  the  boys'  school 
with  which  Lord  Ormont  opens,  there  may  certainly  be 
difference  of  opinion.  It  is  not,  in  any  case,  a  realistic 
representation ;  but  then,  neither  is  the  magnificent 
swimming  scene  at  the  close  of  the  book  realistic,  and 
we  must  at  once  allow  that,  if  actuality  be  demanded  of 
Lord  Ormont  and  his  Aminta,  the  book  will  be  found 
full  of  flaws.  Is  it,  for  instance,  credible  that  Weyburn 
could  have  been  in  Lord  Ormont's  house  for  days  with- 
out recognising  Aminta?  Is  it  possible,  even  setting 
her  husband's  tastes  and  character  aside,  that  Aminta 
herself  would  have  gone  on  bearing  with  Mrs.  Pag- 
nell's  vulgarity?  And  then,  in  regard  to  a  leading 
motive  of  the  book,  Weyburn's  great  international 
school  rests  on  the  shaky  foundation  of  a  tacit  pretence. 
He  and  Aminta  believe  themselves  justified  in  the  step 
they  have  taken  ;  Aminta's  husband  is  ultimately  satis- 
fied, if  not  approving.  But  all  this,  though  it  exonerates 


274  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

them  individually,  falls  wide  of  the  mark,  so  far  as  the 
matter  of  the  school  itself  is  concerned.  The  boys  and 
their  parents  must  inevitably  think  of  Weyburn  and 
Aminta  as  married  ;  and  thus,  though  the  righteousness 
of  their  situation  is  arguable  in  the  abstract,  it  cannot, 
in  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  argued  with  the  persons 
concerned :  the  pair  must  quickly  have  found  them- 
selves in  an  intolerably  precarious  position. 

The  story  begins  to  live  with  the  description — when 
Weyburn  goes  as  secretary  to  Lord  Ormont — of  the 
unknown  Aminta's  gaze.  "  They  were  large  dark  eyes 
of  Southern  night.  They  sped  no  shot ;  they  rolled 
forth  an  envelopment."  There  is  pathos  in  this  vision 
of  the  unknown  lady  with  the  cloud  upon  her ;  and  the 
whole  scene  of  Weyburn  and  Aminta's  meeting  is 
charmingly  conceived,  their  old  memories  breathing 
through  present  obscurity.  The  tale  centres  in  this 
cloud  over  Aminta,  and  Weyburn's  consciousness  and 
penetration  of  it  are  very  skilfully  developed.  The 
smirchings  from  Lady  Charlotte's  rattle  drop  away  in 
Aminta's  presence,  but  the  cloud  is  still  there.  Lord 
Ormont's  share  in  the  matter  is  only  to  be  understood 
by  realising  that,  although  the  original  error  is  his,  it 
is  as  a  result  of  her  own  action  that  Aminta  is  in  the 
position  in  which  Weyburn  finds  her.  Lord  Ormont, 
like  many  other  of  Meredith's  characters,  has  lost,  if 
indeed  he  ever  possessed  it,  the  power  of  regarding  any 
woman  as  an  individual,  to  be  detached  from  his  general 
view  of  her  sex.  His  attitude  to  the  woman  he  has 
taken  as  his  wife,  though  it  differs  in  degree,  does  not 
differ  in  kind  from  the  attitude  he  has  adopted  to 
others.  Yet  a  delightful  sidelight  is  thrown  on  the 
six  years  of  marriage  previous  to  the  opening  of  the 
story,  by  their  occasional  reversions  to  the  old  nick- 
names, the  "  Xarifa  "  and  "  Knight  Durandarte  "  of  the 


LORD   ORMONT  275 

days  of  their  wanderings.  They  were  married  at 
the  Embassy  in  Madrid  (Aminta  is  partially  Spanish), 
and  have  roamed  about  Europe  together  ever  since. 
Having  been  censured  for  high-handedness  in  his  con- 
duct of  affairs  in  India,  Lord  Ormont  was,  and  still 
is,  completely  at  loggerheads  with  his  country,  and 
consequently  at  loggerheads  also  with  his  most  inti- 
mate relation,  the  one  person  who  is  not  to  be  deceived 
by  his  would-be  contempt  for  his  judges.  He  is  the 
most  gallant  of  comrades,  and  his  love  for  Aminta  real ; 
but  the  last  thing  he  had  expected  her  to  demand 
was  the  dullness  and  decorum  of  conventional  English 
society,  and  he  has  regarded  it  as  part  of  the  tacit 
understanding  between  them,  that  she  should  be  in- 
cluded in  his  self-inflicted  banishment  from  the  land  of 
his  birth.  But  Aminta,  mainly  at  her  aunt's  instigation, 
has  now  begun  to  press  for  settlement  in  England  and 
open  acknowledgment  of  her  position  as  Countess  of 
Ormont.  The  Earl,  hardly  more  in  annoyance  than 
amusement,  sees  that  to  submit  to  his  wife's  tactics 
would  involve  coming  to  terms  with  his  country,  and, 
if  the  game  of  Pull  and  Pull  is  to  be  played,  he  is 
ready  for  his  part  in  it.  When  the  story  opens,  Aminta 
has  so  far  prevailed  that  they  are  living  in  London  ;  but 
to  all  her  hints  and  suggestions  in  regard  to  Steignton, 
the  Earl's  country  seat,  he  replies  imperturbably  that  it 
is  let  and  that  he  is  well  enough  satisfied  with  his  tenant. 
Aminta's  aunt,  Mrs.  Nargett  Pagnell  (her  character  is 
to  be  inferred  from  her  name,  and  from  her  pronuncia- 
tion of  it,  Naryett  Pagnell),  is  staying  in  the  house,  and 
daily  grows  more  clamorous  in  her  effort  to  secure 
public  acknowledgment  for  her  niece.  Behind  this 
situation  looms  Lady  Charlotte  Eglett,  Lord  Ormont's 
sister  already  referred  to,  publicly  incredulous  of  the 
idea  that  her  brother  has  given  Aminta  his  name:  into 


276  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

it,  Aminta's  old  schoolboy  lover  and  Lord  Ormont's 
adorer,  Matey  Weyburn,  is  precipitated,  and  the, story 
moves  to  its  end. 

Aminta  is  very  gracefully  drawn  ;  her  bewilderment 
and  fluctuations  of  feeling,  the  whirlpool  sucking  to 
contemplate  the  dangerous  passion  Morsfield  offers  her, 
and  the  sweet,  sunny  contrast  of  her  love  for  Weyburn, 
it  is  all  excellent.  Weyburn  too  is  really  a  very  plea- 
sant fellow,  and  though  Meredith  makes  him  talk  like 
a  prig  occasionally  (partly  by  reason  of  his  effort  to 
prevent  his  doing  so),  there  is  no  strain  of  priggishness 
in  his  nature.  The  scene  by  the  death-bed  of  Wey- 
burn's  mother  is  enriched  with  some  of  the  choicest 
flowers  of  Meredith's  thought.  "  His  prayer  was  as  a 
little  fountain,  not  rising  high  out  of  earth,  and  in  the 
clutch  of  death  ;  but  its  being  it  had  from  death,  his 
love  gave  it  food."  "  Prayer  is  power  within  us  to  com- 
municate with  the  desired  beyond  our  thirsts."  "We  do 
not  get  to  any  heaven  by  renouncing  the  mother  we 
spring  from  ;  and  when  there  is  an  eternal  secret  for  us, 
it  is  best  to  believe  that  Earth  knows,  to  keep  near 
her,  even  in  our  utmost  aspirations."  And  some  of  the 
adroitest  of  Meredith's  sayings,  such  as  of  Friendship, — 
"  If  it  is  not  life's  poetry,  it  is  a  credible  prose;  a  land 
of  low  undulations  instead  of  Alps  ;  beyond  the  terrors 
and  deceptions ", — are  to  be  found  in  the  book.  But 
its  power  culminates  in  the  two  splendid  climaxes — 
Aminta's  flight  from  Steignton,  and  the  scene  in  which, 
in  Lady  Charlotte's  presence,  her  farewell  letter  reaches 
Lord  Ormont.  In  the  first,  the  description  of  the 
country  flying  by  as  they  drive  is  one  of  Meredith's 
triumphantly  living  landscapes  ;  the  second  is  among 
the  greatest  things  he  has  written.  Meredith  seldom 
appeals  to  tears  ;  he  does  so  here.  Owing  to  Aminta's 
pursuit  by  unworthy  admirers,  Lord  Ormont  has  been 


LORD   ORMONT  277 

slowly  coming  to  see  that  his  secrecy  as  to  their  mar- 
riage has  placed  her  in  an  impossible  position  ;  and 
without  her  knowledge  he  is  preparing  amends  on  the 
scale  of  his  character.  After  a  long  and  wearisome 
tussle,  he  has  at  last  secured  from  his  sister  the  family 
jewels,  which  till  now  she  had  resolutely  refused  to  give 
up.  Lady  Charlotte  comes  to  see  him,  being  in  anxiety 
about  his  health.  She  expresses  relief  at  his  appear- 
ance, and  alludes  to  reviving  appreciation  of  his  worth. 
"  '  The  country  wants  your  services,'  she  says.  '  I  have 
heard  some  talk  of  it.  That  lout  comes  to  a  know- 
ledge of  his  wants  too  late.     If  they  promoted   and 

offered  me  the  command  in  India  to-morrow '     My 

lord  struck  the  arm  of  his  chair.  '  I  live  at  Steignton 
henceforth  :  my  wife  is  at  a  seaside  place  eastward. 
I  take  her  down  to  Steignton  two  days  after  her  return. 
We  entertain  there  in  the  autumn.  You  come?'  'I 
don't.  I  prefer  decent  society.'  '  You  are  in  her  house 
now,  ma'am.'  '  If  I  have  to  meet  the  person  you  mean, 
I  shall  be  civil.  The  society  you've  given  her  I  won't 
meet.'  '  You  will  have  to  meet  the  Countess  of  Ormont 
if  you  care  to  meet  your  brother.'  '  Part  then  on  the 
best  terms  we  can.  I  say  this,  the  woman  who  keeps 
you  from  serving  your  country,  she's  your  country's 
enemy.'  '  Hear  my  answer.  The  lady  who  is  my  wife 
has  had  to  suffer  for  what  you  call  my  country's  treat- 
ment of  me.  It's  a  choice  between  my  country  and 
her.  I  give  her  the  rest  of  my  time.'  '  That's  dotage.' 
'  Fire  away  your  epithets.'  '  Sheer  dotage.  I  don't 
deny  she's  a  handsome  young  woman.'  '  You'll  have 
to  admit  that  Lady  Ormont  takes  her  place  in  our 
family  with  the  best  we  can  name.'  '  You  insult  my 
ears,  Rowsley.'  '  The  world  will  say  it  when  it  has  the 
honour  of  her  acquaintance.'  '  An  honour  suspiciously 
deferred.'     '  That's    between    the    world    and    me.  .  .  .' 


\ 


278  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Letters  of  the  morning's  post  were  brought  in.  The 
earl  turned  over  a  couple  and  took  up  a  third,  saying : 
'  I'll  attend  to  you  in  two  minutes,'  and  thinking  once 
more :  '  Queer  world  it  is  where,  when  you  sheathe  the 
sword,  you  have  to  be  at  play  with  bodkins.'  Lady 
Charlotte  gazed  on  the  carpet,  effervescent  with  retorts 
to  his  last  observation,  rightly  conjecturing  that  the 
letter  he  selected  to  read  was  from  '  his  Aminta.' "  The 
time  seems  endless  to  her  before  his  reading  is  done. 
Lord  Ormont's  appearance  is  strange.  " '  No  bad  news, 
Rowsley?'  The  earl's  breath  fell  heavily.  Lady 
Charlotte  left  her  chair  and  walked  about  the  room. 
1  Rowsley,  I'd  like  to  hear  if  I  can  be  of  use.'  '  Ma'am,' 
he  said,  and  pondered  on  the  word  '  use,'  staring  at  her. 
'  I  don't  intend  to  pry.  I  can't  see  my  brother  look 
like  that  and  not  ask.'  The  letter  was  tossed  on  the 
table  to  her."  She  read  the  lines  dated  from  Felix- 
stowe. It  is  final  and  it  is  long,  dealing  with  details 
of  administration  and  housekeeping,  of  drawers  and 
labelled  keys,  and  where  the  Ormont  jewels  have  been 
left.  "  '  The  woman  is  cool,'  Lady  Charlotte  ejaculates  ; 
and,  'will  she  be  expecting  you  to  answer,  Rowsley?' 
'  Will  that  forked  tongue  cease  hissing ! '  he  shouted, 
in  the  agony  of  a  strong  man  convulsed  both  to  render 
and  conceal  the  terrible,  shameful,  unexampled  gush  of 
tears.  Lady  Charlotte  beheld  her  bleeding  giant.  She 
would  rather  have  seen  the  brother  of  her  love  grimace 
in  woman's  manner  than  let  loose  those  rolling  big 
drops  down  the  face  of  a  rock.  The  big  sob  shook 
him,  and  she  was  shaken  to  dust  by  the  sight.  Now 
she  was  advised  by  her  deep  affection  for  her  brother 
to  sit  patient  and  dumb  behind  shaded  eyes.  .  .  . 
Neither  opened  mouth  when  they  separated.  She 
pressed  and  kissed  a  large  nerveless  hand.  Lord 
Ormont  stood  up  to  bow  her  forth.     His  ruddied  skin 


ONE   OF   OUR   CONQUERORS         279 

had  gone  to  pallor,  resembling  the  berg  of  ice  on  the 
edge  of  Arctic  seas,  when  sunlight  has  fallen  away 
from  it."  This  crumbling  of  brother  and  sister,  how 
touching,  terrible,  beautiful  it  is  ! 

One  of  Our  Conquerors  is  among  the  greatest  of  Mere- 
dith's novels,  and  is  without  doubt  the  most  exasperating; 
his  mania  for  analogy,  metaphor,  epigram,  runs  riot  in 
it ;  the  first  half  of  the  book  is  so  difficult  to  penetrate 
that  it  is  little  a  matter  for  surprise  how  few  readers 
are  familiar  with  the  beauties  contained  in  the  second. 
Possibly,  as  was  hinted  in  an  earlier  chapter,  Meredith 
has  attempted  an  impracticable  task  in  treating  Society 
— Public  Opinion — as  one  of  his  characters  ;  the  in- 
numerable host  of  the  Radnors'  visitors  presents  too 
many  facets  to  be  susceptible  of  a  real  synthesis  by  the 
reader.  The  difficulties  inherent  in  the  subject  are 
increased  by  constant  introduction  of  middle-distance 
characters,  some  of  them,  Colney  Durance  and  Simeon 
Fenellan,  worse  than  useless  to  the  story  ;  others,  like 
Skepsey,  Priscilla,  and  Mr.  Pempton  the  clergyman, 
diverting  its  force  by  the  undue  space  they  occupy  in 
it.  Yet  the  book  contains  some  of  the  most  dramatic 
and  moving  scenes  in  the  whole  of  Meredith's  work, 
and,  throughout,  it  is  the  most  subtle  study  of  social 
forces  and  their  wrecking  of  the  man  who  would  at  once 
ignore  them  and  have  them  on  his  side. 

"  We  are  distracted,  perverted,  made  strangers  to  our- 
selves by  a  false  position  "  ;  this,  of  Nataly,  is  the  key- 
note of  the  book.  That  fall  of  Victor's  on  London 
Bridge — the  description  of  which  has  been  a  stumbling- 
block  to  many — sets  us  at  once  on  the  track  of  the 
central  Idea  of  his  character.  How  subtle  is  the  would- 
be  bonhomie  of  his  recovery  with  its  instant  reinstate- 
ment of  the  Victor  he  knows,  only  to  be  overturned 
again  mentally  by  sight  of  smudges  on  his  waistcoat, 


28o  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

and  by  an  artisan's  misunderstanding  of  his  character ! 
It  epitomises  his  position  to  the  world.  The  Radnors, 
we  are  to  learn,  "  walk  on  a  plank  across  chasms,"  but 
Victor's  equilibrium  is  as  a  rule  so  successfully  pre- 
served, that  he  is  wont  to  look  on  It  as  the  pattern  of 
stability  in  a  world  of  fluctuations.  It  is  impossible  to 
miss  the  glamour  of  the  man,  spite  of  the  fact  that  he 
is  tricked  out  in  Meredith's  most  obscuring  vocabulary. 
In  his  actions  and  effect  upon  others,  he  is  entirely 
convincing;  and  he  is  finally  drawn  and  put  before  us 
in  his  daughter's  feeling  of  his  charm,  the  inspiriting 
quality  that  rushes  others,  just  as  it  rushes  himself,  past 
criticism  or  doubt :  "  There  is  no  grasping  of  one  who 
quickens  us."  Everything  that  Victor  puts  his  hand  to 
is  successful ;  wherever  he  is,  he  rises  head  and  shoulders 
above  his  comrades.  The  error  on  which  he  is  to  be 
shipwrecked  is  of  no  obvious  kind.  "  Victor  had  yet 
to  learn  that  the  man  with  a  material  object  in  aim  is 
the  man  of  his  object ;  and  the  nearer  to  his  mark, 
often  the  further  he  is  from  a  sober  self:  he  is  more  the 
arrow  to  his  bow  than  the  bow  to  his  arrow.  This  we 
pay  for  scheming  :  and  success  is  costly  ;  we  find  we 
have  pledged  the  better  half  of  ourselves  to  clutch  it; 
not  to  be  redeemed  with  the  whole  handful  of  our  prize." 
"  He  is  more  the  arrow  to  his  bow  than  the  bow  to  his 
arrow "  ;  could  Victor's  efficiency,  covering  everything 
except  the  essentials  of  the  situation  he  is  placed  in, 
be  better  expressed  than  in  that  image?  He  is  one  of 
Meredith's  triumphs  in  creation. 

The  description  of  Nataly's  attitude  to  Victor  is  also 
consummately  successful.  She  does  not  dare  analyse 
him,  for  that  might  be  to  condemn  him  and  herself — 
the  past  through  the  present.  "  And  if  we  are  women, 
who  commonly  allow  the  lead  to  men,  getting  it  for 
themselves  only  by  snaky  cunning  or  desperate  adven- 


ONE   OF  OUR   CONQUERORS        281 

ture,   credulity — the    continued    trust   in   the   man — is 
the  alternative  of  despair."     That  paints  poor  tortured 
Nataly's  position  ;  to  escape  despair  she  hoodwinks  her- 
self, perverts  herself,  and   distracts  herself.     Meredith 
has  never  drawn  a  more  wonderful  picture  of  natural 
beauty  and  nobility  thwarted,  prostrated,  twisted,  and 
writhing ;  beauty  and  nobility  forced  to  a  grimace  of 
pain,  and  at  last  almost  to  ugliness,  when  she  wildly 
suspects  Nesta  of  not  discriminating  between  herself 
and  the  world's  Mrs.  Marsetts,  and  touches  the  worst 
abyss  of   false  self-scorn.      Nataly's  position  towards 
Victor,  towards  Nesta,  and  towards  the  world,  is  the  core 
of  the  book.     The  problem  is  felt  mainly  through  her 
attitude  towards  it.     With  the  exception  of  Chloe,  she 
is  the  most  lovable  of  Meredith's  women — as  beautiful 
and  fragile  as  a  flower.     Her  author  has  said  of  her 
surrender  to  Victor  :    "  This  might  be  likened  to  the 
detachment  of  a  flower  on  the  river's  bank  by  swell  of 
flood  :  she  had  no  longer  root  of  her  own  ;  away  she 
sailed,  through  beautiful  scenery,  with  occasionally  a 
crashing  fall,  a  turmoil,  emergence  from  a  vortex,  and 
once  more  the  sunny  whirling  surface  "  ;  and  could  the 
terror  in  her  mind,  running  as  an  undercurrent  to  such 
sailing,   be   more   completely   expressed    than    in    this 
sentence :  "  alarms,  throbbing,  suspicions,  like  those  of 
old  travellers  through  the  haunted  forest,  where  whis- 
pers have  intensity  of  meaning,  and  unseeing  we  are 
seen,   and  unaware  awaited."     The  throb  of   Nataly's 
breaking   heart   and   the  throb  of   Victor's  "  punctilio 
bump  "  are  the  leitmotifs  of  the  book  ;  the  heart  crack- 
ing at  the  end  and  the  brain  dissolving.     One  of  the 
finest  chapters  is  "  Nataly  in  Action,"  a  chapter  which 
for  beauty,  pathos,   insight,  Meredith  has  hardly  ever 
surpassed.     Nataly's  dreamy,  feminine  thoughts  above 
her  anguish,  in  the  train,  her  love  of  Dartrey  sliding 


282  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

insensibly  from  the  maternal  to  the  lover's,  till  she  sees 
herself  in  Nesta's  place,  how  beautiful  they  are  !  Apart 
from  its  subtlety  of  drama  the  chapter  is  full  of  ex- 
quisite description.  After  fainting,  "  unreflectingly,  she 
tried  her  feet  to  support  her,  and  tottered  to  the  door, 
touched  along  to  the  stairs,  and  descended  them,  think- 
ing strangely  upon  such  a  sudden  weakness  of  body, 
when  she  would  no  longer  have  thought  herself  the 
weak  woman."  How  we  see  her  in  that  "  touched 
along"  !  Again,  "  that  doing  of  the  right  thing,  after  a 
term  of  paralysis,  cowardice — any  evil  name — is  one  of 
the  mighty  reliefs,  equal  to  happiness,  of  longer  dura- 
tion "  :  and  again,  when  she  reaches  the  station  where  she 
is  to  meet  Dudley  Sowerby  and  perform  her  terrible 
task,  "  Slowness  of  motion  brought  her  to  the  plain  piece 
of  work  she  had  to  do,  on  a  colourless  earth,  that 
seemed  foggy;  but  one  could  see  one's  way.  Resolution 
is  a  form  of  light,  our  native  light  in  this  dubious  world." 

Nesta  is  less  perfectly  delineated.  In  all  descriptions 
of  her — smiling,  singing,  courageously  upright,  the 
"  blue  butterfly,"  or  the  Britomart,  she  is  most  charming, 
but  she  is  apt  to  be  tiresome  in  her  talk.  The  episode 
of  Mrs.  Marsett  is  finely  contrived  to  test  Nesta  and 
Nataly,  to  give  poor  Nataly's  heart  its  most  terrible 
twist  ("  It's  the  disease  of  a  trouble  to  fly  at  com- 
parisons") :  but  its  significance  is  over-emphasised,  and 
it  is  distasteful  to  see  so  genuine  and  attractive  a  girl  as 
Nesta  showily  shoved  up  into  the  saddle  of  one  of 
Meredith's  hobbies.  Her  love  for  Dartrey  Fenellan  is 
beautiful,  and  the  silent  love  scene  between  them  is  one 
of  the  love  scenes  of  literature. 

The  book  abounds  in  beauty  and  Meredith's  best 
wisdom.  Dudley  Sowerby's  mind,  in  the  state  of  battle 
it  presents  after  Nataly's  communication,  is  admirably 
portrayed  ;    "  he  had   been  educated   in   his  family  to 


ONE   OF   OUR   CONQUERORS         283 

believe  that  the  laws  governing  human  institutions  are 
divine— until  History  has  altered  them.  They  are 
altered  to  present  a  fresh  bulwark  against  the  infidel." 
Was  ever  a  more  splendid  landscape  painted  than  in 
Victor's  vision  of  the  Alps  :  "  Lo,  the  Tyrolese  lime- 
stone crags  with  livid  peaks  and  snow  lining  shelves  and 
veins  of  the  crevices ;  and  folds  of  pine-wood  undula- 
tions closed  by  a  shoulder  of  snow  large  on  the  blue ; 
and  a  dazzling  pinnacle  rising  over  green  pasture-Alpsj 
the  head  of  it  shooting  aloft  as  the  blown  billow,  high 
off  a  broken  ridge,  and  wide-armed  in  its  pure  white 
shroud  beneath  ;  tranced,  but  all  motion  in  immobility, 
to  the  heart  in  the  eye  ;  a  splendid  image  of  striving,  up 
to  crowned  victory."  And  this,  in  another  vein,  is  hardly 
less  delightful :  "  We  are  indebted  almost  for  construction 
to  those  who  will  define  us  briefly :  we  are  but  scattered 
leaves  to  the  general  comprehension  of  us  until  such  a 
work  of  binding  and  labelling  is  done.  And  should  the 
definition  be  not  so  correct  as  brevity  pretends  to  make 
it  at  one  stroke,  we  are  at  least  rendered  portable ;  thus 
we  pass  into  the  conceptions  of  our  fellows,  into  the 
records,  down  to  posterity."  Then  there  is  the  portrait 
of  Mr.  Barmby,  a  clerical  aspirant  to  Nesta's  hand  :  "  he 
was  a  worthy  man,  having  within  him  the  spiritual 
impulse  curiously  ready  to  take  the  place  where  a 
material  disappointment  left  vacancy."  And  of  all 
these  cameos  the  most  beautiful,  perhaps,  is  this  of 
Dudley  and  Nesta :  "  One  day,  treating  of  modern 
Pessimism,  he  had  draped  a  cadaverous  view  of  our 
mortal  being  in  a  quotation  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
Philosopher  Emperor :  '  To  set  one's  love  upon  the 
swallow  is  a  futility.'  And  she,  weighing  it,  nodded,  and 
replied  :  '  May  not  the  pleasure  for  us  remain  if  we  set 
our  love  upon  the  beauty  of  the  swallow's  flight  ? ' " 
Meredith's  philosophy  is  in  Nesta's  reply. 


284  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

Almost  every  current  of  modern  ethical  theory  is 
touched  on  in  0?ie  of  our  Conquerors ;  teetotalism,  vege- 
tarianism, simplicity  of  life,  the  place  of  art  in  English 
society,  the  status  of  women  ("  it  is  undecided  still 
whether  they  do  of  themselves  conceive  principles,  or 
should  submit  to  an  imposition  of  the  same  upon  them 
in  terrorem  "  !),  the  Salvation  Army  and  its  effect  on  the 
masses1 — these  and  innumerable  other  kindred  topics 
are  lengthily  discussed.  No  one,  in  fact,  who  has  not 
read  the  book  can  be  fully  aware  of  the  keenness  or  of 
the  scope  of  Meredith's  interests.  What  may  be  urged 
against  the  book  under  this  head  is  that  it  is  a  scrap- 
bag  of  reflections,  reflections  which  the  fact  that  they 
are  Meredith's  and  among  his  best  is  not  enough  to 
unify.  But  its  claim  to  greatness  rests  on  a  surer 
foundation.  In  the  later  chapters,  at  least,  the  story 
is  developed  with  marvellous  art.  The  subtlest  ven- 
geance social  forces  can  take  has  been  wreaked  on  the 
Radnors,  when  Nataly  sees  herself  divided  from  her 
child  and  ranked  on  the  side  of  convention.  And  in 
that  closing  scene  in  the  house  where  Nataly  and 
Victor  met,  with  its  blue  satin  curtains,  its  gilt  chairs, 
its  Louis  Quatorze  clock,  and  Mrs.  Berman  dying  in 
their  midst,  how  supreme  is  the  magic  which  reveals 
the  vague,  malevolent  spectre,  that  has  hung  over  Nataly 
and  Victor's  life,  as  a  woman  who  has  had  nothing  but 
her  craving  for  vengeance  to  go  with  her  through  the 
years  ! 

1  It  may  be  of  interest  to  note  that  Jump-to-Glory  Jane  appeared  in 
the  Universal  Review  the  year  previous  to  the  publication  of  One  of  our 
Conquerors. 


CHAPTER   XX 
THE   AMAZING   MARRIAGE 

THIS,  the  latest  of  George  Meredith's  novels,  in 
creative  energy  and  vitality  equals,  if  indeed  it 
does  not  surpass,  any  of  its  predecessors.  He  has  re- 
turned in  it  to  his  earlier  and  simpler  manner,  though 
the  matter  is  as  varied  and  complex  as  ever.  The  fire 
of  Sandra  Belloni  unites  with  the  subtlety  of  The 
Egoist,  with  the  result  that  both  are  more  humane : 
neither  claims  mastery ;  both  are  content  to  serve  a 
single  purpose.  In  matters  of  detail  the  old  artifices  are 
present ;  the  first  chapter  is  entitled  "  Dame  Gossip  as 
Chorus,"  and  quotations  are  many  from  the  old  Buc- 
caneer's "  Maxims  for  Men."  Moreover,  the  story  does 
not  really  begin  till  the  opening  of  the  fourth  chapter, 
when  Chillon  John  and  Carinthia  set  out  from  their 
home  in  Bavaria  on  a  journey  to  England.  Yet  the 
previous  chapters  contain  much  in  the  way  of  medita- 
tion that  most  of  us  would  be  unwilling  to  spare  ;  much 
too  is  suggested  of  the  great-heartedness  of  the  old 
Buccaneer  and  the  valiant  aristocracy  of  the  woman  he 
so  tenderly  loved,  that  contributes  to  our  conception  of 
their  daughter  Carinthia.  Indeed,  these  prefatory  chap- 
ters so  strongly  colour  our  view  of  the  main  situation, 
that  we  shall  need  to  modify  our  instinctive  criticism  of 
the  part  Carinthia's  husband  plays  in  it,  by  the  recol- 
lection that  we  have  knowledge  which  he  cannot  share. 

285 


286  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Where  he  thought  confusedly  of  the  Old  Buccaneer  as 
one  who  had  outraged  the  laws  of  society  and  was  there- 
fore presumably  of  the  undisciplined,  the  reader  has 
been  allowed  clear  view  of  one  who  "  never  had  failed 
in  an  undertaking  without  stripping  bare  to  expose 
himself  where  he  had  been  wanting  in  Intention  and 
Determination." 

Carinthia  has  a  mysterious  kinship  with  the  moun- 
tains and  the  dawn.  We  see  her  first  on  a  twelve-foot 
leap  from  a  window  of  her  dark  and  dismantled  home, 
going  before  daybreak  with  her  brother  to  a  mountain- 
top  to  renew  their  past  in  the  childish  game  of  "calling 
the  morning."  Nowhere  else  in  his  prose  description 
has  Meredith  surpassed  his  picture  of  dawn  as  Carinthia 
and  Chillon  saw  it  that  day ;  to  the  heroine  of  this,  his 
last  novel,  he  has  lent  his  poet-vision  at  its  intensest — 
the  parallel  with  the  Hymn  to  Colour  being  indeed 
curiously  close :  "  Dawn  in  the  mountain-land  is  a 
meeting  of  many  friends.  The  pinnacle,  the  forest- 
head,  the  latschen-tufted  mound,  rock-bastion  and 
defiant  cliff  and  giant  of  the  triple  peak,  were  in  view, 
clearly  lined  for  a  common  recognition,  but  all  were 
figures  of  solid  gloom,  unfeatured  and  bloomless. 
Another  minute  and  they  had  flung  off  their  mail 
and  changed  to  various,  indented,  intricate,  succinct 
in  ridge,  scar  and  channel ;  and  they  had  all  a  look 
of  watchfulness  that  made  them  one  company.  The 
smell  of  rock-waters  and  roots  of  herb  and  moss  grew 
keen  ;  air  became  a  wine  that  raised  the  breast  high  to 
breathe  it ;  an  uplifting  coolness  pervaded  the  heights. 
.  .  .  The  plumes  of  cloud  now  slowly  entered  into  the 
lofty  arch  of  dawn  and  melted  from  brown  to  purple- 
black.  The  upper  sky  swam  with  violet  ;  and  in  a 
moment  each  stray  cloud-feather  was  edged  with  rose, 
and  then  suffused.     It  seemed  that  the  heights  fronted 


THE   AMAZING   MARRIAGE  287 

East  to  eye  the  interflooding  of  colours,  and  it  was 
imaginable  that  all  turned  to  the  giant  whose  forehead 
first  kindled  to  the  sun  :  a  greeting  of  god  and  king. 
.  .  .  The  armies  of  the  young  sunrise  in  mountain- 
lands  neighbouring  the  plains,  vast  shadows,  were 
marching  over  woods  and  meads,  black  against  the  edge 
of  golden ;  and  great  heights  were  cut  with  them,  and 
bounding  waters  took  the  leap  in  a  silvery  radiance  of 
gloom  ;  the  bright  and  dark-banded  valleys  were  like 
night  and  morning  taking  hands  down  the  sweep  of 
their  rivers.  Immense  was  the  range  of  vision  scud- 
ding the  peaks  and  over  the  illimitable  Eastward  plains 
flat  to  the  very  East  and  sources  of  the  sun." 

Changefulness  of  aspect  is  among  the  many  subtle 
resemblances  between  Carinthia  and  her  mountain 
home.  Chillon  scrutinising  her  face  for  some  warrant 
of  her  fortune,  finds  himself  forced  to  the  conclusion 
that  she  is  plain,  or  at  any  rate  unhandsome,  though 
her  features  are  expressive  enough  ;  "  at  times  he  had 
thought  them  marvellous,  in  the  clear  cut  of  the  animat- 
ing mind."  Woodseer  sees  deeper,  but  his  phrases — "  A 
haggard  Venus,"  "  A  beautiful  Gorgon,"  are  too  neat 
and  epigrammatic  to  serve  as  descriptions.  He  is 
happier  in  his  less  ambitious  suggestions  of  a  particular 
quality  that  comes  and  goes  :  "  A  panting  look,"  "  A 
look  of  beaten  flame,"  "  From  minute  to  minute  she  is 
the  rock  that  loses  the  sun  at  night  and  reddens  in  the 
morning."  On  his  first  meeting  with  Carinthia,  Fleet- 
wood finds  good  breeding  and  "  something  more  than 
breeding  "  stamped  on  her  features  ;  Livia  and  Henri- 
etta acknowledge,  in  calling  her  plain,  that  animation 
changes  the  character  of  her  face.  But  it  is  among  the 
greatest  of  tributes  to  Meredith's  art  that,  without  any 
direct  statement  on  his  part,  other  than  these  half- 
hearted   commendations    of    her    contemporaries,    his 


288  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

readers  are  in  no  way  astonished  by  Henrietta's 
account  of  Carinthia's  appearance  at  the  Ducal  Ball 
at  the  Schloss.  "  Chillon,  she  was  magical !  you  cannot 
ever  have  seen  her  irradiated  with  happiness.  Her 
pleasure  in  the  happiness  of  all  around  her  was  part  of 
the  charm.  One  should  be  a  poet  to  describe  her.  It 
would  task  an  artist  to  paint  the  rose- crystal  she 
became  when  threading  her  way  through  the  groups  to 
be  presented.  This  is  not  meant  to  say  that  she 
looked  beautiful.  It  was  the  something  above  beauty — 
more  unique  and  impressive — like  the  Alpine  snow- 
cloak  towering  up  from  the  flowery  slopes  you  know  so 
well  and  I  a  little."  By  the  time  age  is  reached  loveli- 
ness of  this  quality  will,  to  some  extent  at  least,  have 
stamped  itself  on  the  features  :  but  in  youth  it  comes 
and  goes,  flaming  at  its  intensest  in  moments  of  stress, 
when  a  sudden  and  unaccustomed  call  is  made  upon 
action.  It  is  part  of  the  perfection  of  Meredith's  work- 
manship in  this  matter  that  he  never  asks  us  to  realise 
Carinthia's  face  in  quiescence.  The  vision  of  her  after 
her  marriage  lives  for  most  of  us  in  two  scenes — her 
farewell  to  her  husband  on  the  day  of  her  wedding, 
and  her  final  conversation  with  him,  a  year  or  two 
later,  in  Wales.  In  the  first,  Fleetwood,  who  except 
on  the  top  of  the  coach  has  not  been  alone  with  her 
since  the  ceremony  in  the  church,  comes  to  announce 
to  Carinthia  that  he  is  leaving  her  for  an  indefinite 
period  of  time.  She  has  had  no  preparation  for  his 
news;  when  he  finds  her  in  the  inn  sitting-room,  "She 
was  seated  ;  neither  crying,  nor  smiling,  nor  pointedly 
serious  in  any  way,  not  conventionally  at  her  ease 
either.  .  .  .  She  spoke  without  offence,  the  simplest  of 
words,  affected  no  solicitudes,  put  on  no  gilt  smiles, 
wore  no  reproaches :  spoke  to  him  as  if  so  it  happened 
— he  had  necessarily  a  journey  to  perform.     One  could 


THE    AMAZING    MARRIAGE  2S9 

see  all  the  while  big  drops  falling  from  the  wound 
within.  One  could  hear  it  in  her  voice.  Imagine  a 
crack  of  the  string  at  the  bow's  deep  stress.  Or  im- 
agine the  bow  paralysed  at  the  moment  of  the  deepest 
sounding.  And  yet  the  voice  did  not  waver.  She  had 
now  the  richness  of  tone  carrying  on  a  music  through 
silence.  .  .  .  Her  brown  eyes  were  tearless,  not  alluring 
or  beseeching  or  repelling  ;  they  did  but  look,  much  like 
the  skies  opening  high  aloof  on  a  wreck  of  storm.  Her 
reddish  hair — chestnut,  if  you  will — let  fall  a  skein  over 
one  of  the  rugged  brows,  and  softened  the  ruggedness 
by  making  it  wilder,  as  if  a  great  bird  were  winging 
across  a  shoulder  of  the  mountain  ridges.  No  longer 
the  chalk-quarry  face, — its  paleness  now  was  that  of 
night  Alps  beneath  a  moon  chasing  the  shadows." 
To  some,  this  suggestion  of  a  whole  by  means  of 
flickering  images,  half-defined,  will  seem  the  sole  means 
by  which  Meredith  can  achieve  the  end  which  he  has  in 
view — that  end  being  not  the  portrayal  of  something 
polished  and  complete,  but  the  adumbration  of  a  per- 
sonality instinct  with  loveliness  as  yet  unrealised. 
Others  will  complain  of  heaped  and  unrelated  meta- 
phor, by  its  very  variety  and  inconstancy  rendered 
meaningless.  Of  these  it  may  fairly  be  demanded  that 
they  add  to  their  recollection  of  what  has  been  said  of 
Meredith's  use  of  metaphor  in  general  a  consideration 
of  the  particular  task  he  has  proposed  to  himself  here. 
As,  in  his  abstract  treatment  of  life,  he  moves  on  the 
horizon  of  thought,  sallying  forth  to  identify  some 
blurred  and  meaningless  presence,  and,  by  gleams 
flashing  from  hither  and  thither,  set  it,  in  poetry  or 
prose,  revealed  to  his  fellows  for  the  thing  that  it  is,  so 
in  the  heroine  of  his  last  novel  he  has  given  dramatic 
presentation  and  shape  to  an  ideal  of  beauty,  winged 
and  transforming,  which,  while  it  hovered  on  the  border- 
u 


2go  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

land   of  our  consciousness,  had   hitherto  hovered   un- 
caught. 

While  Chillon  and  Carinthia  are  crossing  the  moun- 
tains to  Baden,  Gower  Woodseer  and  Lord  Fleetwood, 
each  baulked  in  his  search  for  solitude,  are  making 
friends  on  the  shores  of  the  neighbouring  lake.  Fleet- 
wood is  tied  to  the  district  by  the  presence  of  the 
beautiful  Henrietta  Fakenham,  of  whose  devotion  to 
Chillon,  Carinthia,  by  a  sight  of  her  portrait  and  letters, 
has  already  been  assured.  On  the  relationship  of  this 
strangely  assorted  pair,  "  the  young  man  who  fancied 
he  had  robed  himself  in  the  plain  homespun  of  a  natural 
philosopher  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,"  and  the  young 
lord  who  "  was  not  by  nature  a  dreamer,  only  dreamed 
of  the  luxury  of  being  one,"  Meredith's  subtlest  powers 
have  been  exercised.  There  is  much  in  common  in 
their  temperaments ;  and  circumstance  supplies  the 
contrast  that  provides  their  relation  with  the  piquancy 
they  require  of  it.  Readers  of  The  Empty  Purse  will 
not  find  it  difficult  from  the  outset  to  predict  that,  of 
the  two  theorists,  he  who  replies  to  the  wealthy  Lord 
Fleetwood's — "  May  I  ask  which  of  the  Universities?" — 
with  a  panegyric  of  his  schooling  on  the  Open  Road, 
and  the  statement — "  I  have  studied  in  myself  the  old 
animal  having  his  head  pushed  into  the  collar  to  earn  a 
feed  of  corn  " — will  be  the  earliest  to  "  strike  earth  "  and 
effectiveness.  But  even  though  the  final  harbourage  of 
his  nature  is  foreseen,  there  are  hints  from  the  first  that 
Woodseer's  impressionable  personality  will  be  involved 
in  back-eddies  and  tides,  before  anchorage  is  secured. 
On  the  threshold,  Meredith's  old  danger  signal  is  hung 
out.  Woodseer's  insight  is  real,  his  penetration  un- 
doubted, but  he  labours  under  the  disadvantage  common 
to  men  who  have  developed  amongst  their  intellectual 
inferiors.     Having  evolved  certain    theories  of  life   on 


THE   AMAZING   MARRIAGE  291 

his  own  account,  he  is  unable  to  hold  them  with  sufficient 
relativity,  or  to  grasp  the  complexity  of  the  interests 
against  which  he  inveighs.  Dragons  that  have  power 
to  slay  strong  men,  he  imagines,  may  be  dismissed  in  an 
epigram.  His  philosophy  cries  scorn  at  the  thought  of 
any  possible  allurement  in  the  green  tables  at  Baden, 
or  submission  to  a  personal  attraction  not  based  on 
reason  and  mental  similarity.  In  consequence,  before 
he  turns  from  the  tables,  the  purse  of  another  as  well  as 
his  own  is  emptied,  and  in  submission  to  Livia's  fascina- 
tion he  betrays  the  trust  of  a  dying  man,  and  is  forced 
to  realise  that — "  indeed  below  the  roadway  of  ordinary 
principles  hedged  with  dull  texts,  he  had  strangely 
fallen."  Meredith  comments  characteristically  on  the 
somewhat  lofty  tone  in  which  Woodseer  explains  that, 
being  without  money  to  lose  or  inclination  to  gain,  he  is 
free  of  all  temptation  to  gamble.  "  They  were  no  doubt 
good  reasons  and  they  were  grand  morality.  They  were 
at  the  same  time  customary  phrases  of  the  unfleshed  in 
folly."  Equally  characteristic  is  his  comment  at  the 
moment  previous  to  Woodseer's  submission  to  Livia's 
temptation.  "  Not  only  is  he  no  philosopher  who  has 
an  idol,  he  has  to  learn  that  he  cannot  think  rationally  ; 
his  due  sense  of  weight  and  measure  is  lost,  the  choice 
of  his  thoughts  as  well." 

When  Fleetwood  and  Woodseer  meet  for  the  first  time, 
they  are  led  to  a  ready  mutual  understanding  by  the 
fact  that  Fleetwood  has  found  Woodseer's  notebook 
lying  open  on  an  inn  bench  and  read  it  through.  The 
latest  entries  refer  to  the  writer's  glimpse  of  Carinthia, 
and  Woodseer  finds  himself  amazed  at  Fleetwood's 
power  of  visualisation  on  the  meagre  basis  they  afford- 
A  more  experienced  person  would  have  perceived  the 
young  lord's  malady,  recognised  that  "  here  was  one 
bitten  by  the  serpent  of  love,  and  athirst  for  an  image  of 


292  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

the  sex  to  serve  as  a  cooling  herb";  but  Woodseer  at- 
tributes the  sympathy  to  a  curious  imaginative  fellow- 
ship between  himself  and  Fleetwood,  and  proceeds  to 
talk  of  Carinthia  more  and  more  in  the  abstract.     A 
difference  of  opinion  between  them  as  to  the  title — 
whether  "  girl "  or  "  gorgon  "—by  which  she  can  best  be 
described,  induces  coolness  and  even  some  danger  of  a 
quarrel.     In  a  common  determination  to  sleep  near  the 
mountain-top,  and  to  avoid  the  city,  their  friendship  to 
some  extent  is  renewed  ;  but  it  is  with  a  reserve.     On 
the  point  under  dispute  neither  is  prepared  to  give  way. 
For  in  their  differing  positions,  and  with  differing  pos- 
sibilities of  exercising  the  tendency,  the  temper  of  both 
is  tyrannical.     Up  to  this  point  and  for  some  time  after, 
notably  in  his  visit  to  the  tailor  at  Carlsruhe,  his  escapade 
at  the  gaming-table,  and  his  adoration  of  the  Countess 
Livia,  Woodseer  shows  as  Lord  Fleetwood's  inferior — 
in  abstract  intellectuality  his  equal,  but  from  lack  of 
experience  his  inferior  in  action.      Why,  and  at  what 
point  then  we  may  ask,  does  the  young  Welshman  over- 
take and  begin  to  outstrip  his  friend  ?     Half  through  the 
book,  Fleetwood  himself  is  astounded  to  realise  that, 
instead  of  idolising  the  Countess  Livia,  Woodseer  is  now 
her  master,  and  has  not  the  smallest  desire  to  fall  in  with 
his  lordship's  scheme  for  their  marriage ;  that,  in  fact, 
he  has  asked  and  won  the  love  of  Carinthia's  waiting- 
maid    and    friend,  a  girl    in    many  points   closely  re- 
sembling her  mistress ;  and,  though  Fleetwood  possesses 
the  grace  and  insight  to  recognise  progress  in  these 
changes,  he  is  a  good  deal  at  a  loss  to  understand  how 
they  occurred.      For  the  reader  who  has  looked   into 
Woodseer's  mind,  explanations  are  not  far  to  seek.     The 
development,    as    already    suggested,  is    partially    at- 
tributable to  his  circumstances,  the  fact  that  he  is  not 
walled  off  by  wealth  from  the  realities  of  life;  but  beyond 


THE   AMAZING    MARRIAGE  293 

this  he  has  an  advantage  the  reverse  side  of  which  has 
already  been  stated.  He  has  been  seen,  from  lack  of 
social  knowledge  and  experience,  to  take  his  own  con- 
victions somewhat  too  seriously,  but  they  were  genuine 
convictions  worthy  the  name.  He  has  not  toyed  with 
his  intellect  or  learned  to  divorce  his  thoughts  from  his 
action.  It  was  inevitable  that  his  inexperience  should 
be  overpowered  by  Livia's  fascination  and  beauty,  in- 
evitable perhaps  that  at  first  he  should  succumb  to  any 
temptation  she  coupled  with  intimacy  and  mutual 
understanding.  What  was  not  inevitable,  what  is  in  fact 
peculiar  to  himself  and  his  kind,  "  men  with  a  passion 
for  spiritual  cleanliness,"  was  his  power  of  recognising, 
immediately  and  unprompted,  the  nature  of  the  deed  he 
had  done.  He  hears  his  father  speculating  as  to  the 
conduct  of  Carinthia's  husband  and  responds  to  his 
demand,  "  Can  you  imagine  the  doing  of  an  injury  by  a 
man  to  a  woman  like  her  ?  "  "  Yes,  I  can  imagine  it, 
I'm  doing  it  myself.  I  shall  be  doing  it  till  I've  written 
a  letter  and  paid  a  visit."  The  confession  made,  "  He 
took  a  meditative  stride  or  two  in  the  room,  thinking 
without  revulsion  of  the  Countess  Livia  under  a  simili- 
tude of  the  bell  of  the  plant  henbane,  and  that  his 
father  had  immunity  from  temptation  because  of  the 
insensibility  to  beauty.  Out  of  which  he  passed  to  the 
writing  of  the  letter  to  Lord  Fleetwood,  informing  his 
lordship  that  he  intended  immediately  to  deliver  a 
message  to  the  Marchioness  of  Arpington  from  Admiral 
Baldwin  Fakenham,  in  relation  to  the  Countess  of  Fleet- 
wood. A  duty  was  easily  done  by  Woodseer  when  he 
had  surmounted  the  task  of  conceiving  his  resolution  to 
do  it ;  and  this  task,  involving  an  offence  to  the  Lady 
Livia  and  intrusion  of  his  name  on  a  nobleman's  recol- 
lection, ranked  next  in  severity  to  the  chopping  off  of 
his  fingers  by  a  man  suspecting  them  of  the  bite  of  rabies." 


294  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

Courage  certainly  would  be  required  for  such  an  ampu- 
tation ;  but  when  it  is  remembered  that  the  amputator  in 
this  case  acknowledged  no  bite,  knew  only  of  what  he 
had  hitherto  supposed  was  a  life-giving  experience,  the 
insight  that  went  to  his  diagnosis  and  instant  detection 
of  poison  is  felt  to  be  rarer. 

Fleetwood's  errors  are  subtler,  as  his  circumstances 
are  more  involved.  Like  Woodseer,  and  almost  every 
one  else  in  the  book  worth  speaking  to,  he  is  partially 
Welsh.  What  this  involves  Meredith,  here  and  else- 
where, has  been  at  some  pains  to  inform  us.  During 
Victor  Radnor's  concert  in  One  of  Our  Conquerors,  a 
German  visitor  listens  to  comments  that  cause  him  to 
ask  whether  the  English  care  in  the  least  for  music,  or 
indeed  for  anything  other  than  material  good.  Mere- 
dith replies  to  the  question  in  person.  They  care,  he 
says,  more  than  appears ;  moreover,  in  speaking  of 
them  as  a  nation,  it  should  be  realised  how  largely 
in  matters  of  Art  the  whole  is  now  leavened  and  in- 
spirited by  the  Welsh,  Irish,  and  Scotch.  In  Sandra 
Belloni  pride  in  his  race  is  more  ardently  and  less  tem- 
perately expressed.  He  alludes  to  "  peculiar  Welsh 
delicacy,"  and  says  :  "  All  subtle  feelings  are  discovered 
by  Welsh  eyes  when  untroubled  by  any  mental  agita- 
tion. Brother  and  sister  were  Welsh,  and  I  may 
observe  that  there  is  human  nature  and  Welsh  nature." 
In  reference  to  Woodseer  and  Fleetwood,  he  reminds  us 
that  a  Welshman  is  excitable,  ready  at  all  times  to  start 
on  a  quest,  a  wild-goose  chase  even,  but  that,  though 
his  quarry  may  be  vague  and  immaterial  to  the  eyes  of 
his  neighbours,  it  will  be  clear  to  his  own.  Unlike  the 
Teuton,  the  Welshman,  we  are  told,  never  kindles  the 
fire  of  his  present  on  the  ashes  of  his  past.  Loved  or 
hated,  that  which  once  has  been  lives  animate  behind 
the  shroud,  quick  at  a  word,  a  scent,  a  sound,  to  re- 


THE   AMAZING    MARRIAGE  295 

assert  itself  in  the  present.  This  last  trait  gives  us  the 
key  to  much  that  is  puzzling  in  Fleetwood's  career. 
For  in  many  natures  at  war  with  themselves  it  is  a 
characteristic  of  their  want  of  unity  to  be  able  to 
think  and  act  in  their  best  moments  in  forgetfulness 
of  their  worst.  But  Fleetwood  is  dogged  throughout 
by  memories  of  actions  so  alien  to  his  feeling  in  the 
present,  seemingly  so  little  emanations  of  himself,  that 
he  sinks  back  on  the  idea  of  fatality.  He  is  roused  to 
a  peculiarly  keen  consciousness  of  this  in  the  scene 
where  he  parts  from  his  wife  by  the  graveyard  of  the 
very  church  in  which  they  had  been  married.  After 
long  separation  he  comes  to  the  house  he  has  appor- 
tioned her,  determined,  whatever  it  may  cost  him,  to 
arrive  at  some  understanding.  Hearing  he  is  to  come, 
she  goes  to  stay  with  some  friends  who  live  near  by. 
He  accompanies  her  in  the  late  afternoon  on  her  walk 
to  their  house.  "  Up  the  lane  by  the  park  they  had 
open  lands  to  the  heights  of  Croridge.  '  Splendid 
clouds,'  Fleetwood  remarked.  She  looked  up,  thinking 
of  the  happy  long  day's  walk  with  her  brother  to  the 
Styrian  Baths.  Pleasure  in  the  sight  made  her  face 
shine  superbly.  '  A  flying  Switzerland,  Mr.  Woodseer 
says,'  she  replied  ;  '  England  is  beautiful  on  days  like 
these.  For  walking,  I  think  the  English  climate  very 
good.'  He  dropped  a  murmur  :  '  It  should  suit  so  good 
a  walker,'  and  burned  to  compliment  her  spirited  easy 
stepping,  and  scorned  himself  for  the  sycophancy  it 
would  be  before  they  were  on  the  common  ground  of  a 
restored  understanding.  But  an  approval  of  any  of  her 
acts  threatened  him  with  enthusiasm  for  the  whole 
of  them,  her  person  included ;  and  a  dam  in  his  breast 
had  to  keep  back  the  flood.  '  You  quote  Woodseer  to 
me,  Carinthia.  I  wish  you  knew  Lord  Feltre.  He  can 
tell  you  of  every  cathedral,  convent,  and  monastery  in 


296  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

Europe  and  Syria.  Nature  is  well  enough ;  she  is,  as 
he  says,  a  savage.  Men's  works,  acting  under  divine 
direction  to  escape  from  that  tangle,  are  better  worthy 
of  study,  perhaps.  If  one  has  done  wrong,  for  example.' 
1 1  could  listen  to  him,'  she  said.  '  You  would  not  need 
— except,  yes,  one  thing.  Your  father's  book  speaks  of 
not  forgiving  an  injury.'  '  My  father  does.  He  thinks 
it  weakness  to  forgive  an  injury.  Women  do,  and  they 
are  disgraced,  they  are  thought  slavish.  My  brother  is 
much  stronger  than  I  am.  He  is  my  father  alive  in 
that.'  '  It  is  anti-Christian,  some  would  think.'  '  Let 
offending  people  go.  He  would  not  punish  them. 
They  may  go  where  they  will  be  forgiven.  For  them 
our  religion  is  a  happy  retreat :  we  are  glad  they  have 
it.  My  father  and  my  brother  say  that  injury  forbids  us 
to  be  friends  again.  My  father  was  injured  by  the 
English  Admiralty :  he  never  forgave  it ;  but  he  would 
have  fought  one  of  their  ships  and  offered  his  blood 
any  day,  if  his  country  called  to  battle.  .  .  .'  The 
dwarf  tower  of  Croridge  village  church  fronted  them 
against  the  sky,  seen  of  both.  '  You  remember  it,'  he 
said.  And  she  answered  :  '  I  was  married  there.'  '  You 
have  not  forgotten  that  injury,  Carinthia ? '  'I  am  a 
mother.'  '  By  all  the  saints !  you  hit  hard.  Justly. 
Not  you.  Our  deeds  are  the  hard  hitters.  We  learn 
when  they  begin  to  flagellate,  stroke  upon  stroke ! 
Suppose  we  hold  a  costly  thing  in  the  hand  and  dash 
it  to  the  ground — no  recovering  of  it,  none !  That 
must  be  what  your  father  meant.  I  can't  regret  you 
are  a  mother.  We  have  a  son,  a  bond.  How  can  I 
describe  the  man  I  was!'  he  muttered, — '  possessed  !  sort 
of  werewolf !  You  are  my  wife?'  'I  was  married 
to  you,  my  lord.'  '  It's  a  tie  of  a  kind.'  '  It  binds  me.' 
1  Obey,  you  said.'  '  Obey  it.  I  do.'  '  You  consider  it 
holy  ? '     '  My  father  and   mother  spoke  to  me  of  the 


THE   AMAZING   MARRIAGE  297 

marriage-tie.  I  read  the  service  before  I  stood  at  the 
altar.  It  is  holy.  It  is  dreadful.  I  will  be  true  to  it.' 
'  To  your  husband  ? '  'To  his  name,  to  his  honour.' 
'  To  the  vow  to  live  with  him  ? '  '  My  husband  broke 
that  for  me.'  '  Carinthia,  if  he  bids  you,  begs  you  to 
renew  it?  God  knows  what  you  may  save  me  from.' 
'  Pray  to  God.  Do  not  beg  of  me,  my  lord.  I  have 
my  brother  and  my  little  son.  No  more  of  husband 
for  me !  God  has  given  me  a  friend,  too, — a  man  of 
humble  heart,  my  brother's  friend,  my  dear  Rebecca's 
husband.  He  can  take  them  from  me :  no  one  but 
God.  See  the  splendid  sky  we  have.'  With  those 
words  she  barred  the  gates  on  him  ;  at  the  same  time 
she  bestowed  the  frank  look  of  an  amiable  face  brilliant 
in  the  lively  red  of  her  exercise,  in  its  bent-bow  curve 
along  the  forehead,  out  of  the  line  of  beauty,  touching, 
as  her  voice  was,  to  make  an  undertone  of  anguish 
swell  an  ecstasy.  So  he  felt  it,  for  his  mood  was  now 
the  lover's.  A  torture  smote  him,  to  find  himself 
transported  by  that  voice  at  his  ear  to  the  scene  of  the 
young  bride  in  thirty-acre  meadow.  '  I  propose  to  call 
on  Captain  Kirby-Levellier  to-morrow,  Carinthia,'  he 
said.  'The  name  of  the  house?'  '  My  brother  is  not 
now  any  more  in  the  English  army,'  she  replied.  '  He 
has  hired  a  furnished  house  named  Stoneridge.'  '  He 
will  receive  me,  I  presume?'  'My  brother  is  a  courteous 
gentleman,  my  lord.'  '  Here  is  the  church,  and  here 
we  have  to  part  for  to-day.  Do  we  ? '  '  Good-bye  to 
you,  my  lord,'  she  said.  He  took  her  hand  and  dropped 
the  dead  thing.  '  Your  idea  is,  to  return  to  Esslemont 
some  day  or  other? '  '  For  the  present,'  was  her  strange 
answer.  She  bowed,  she  stepped  on.  On  she  sped, 
leaving  him  at  the  stammered  beginning  of  his  appeal 
to  her.  Their  parting  by  the  graveyard  of  the  church 
that  had  united  them  was  what  the  world  would  class 


298  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

as  curious.  To  him  it  was  a  further  and  a  well-marked 
stroke  of  the  fatality  pursuing  him.  He  sauntered  by  the 
graveyard  wall  until  her  figure  slipped  out  of  sight.  It 
went  like  a  puffed  candle,  and  still  it  haunted  the  corner 
where  last  seen.  Her  vanishing  seemed  to  say,  that 
less  of  her  belonged  to  him  than  the  phantom  his  eyes 
retained  behind  them  somewhere."  Standing  by  the 
wall  of  the  graveyard  till  Carinthia  is  out  of  sight, 
Fleetwood  finds  himself  fingering  a  pocket-pistol  he 
has  begged  from  the  relative  of  one  of  his  satellites, 
who  lately  used  it  to  speed  himself  to  the  unknown. 
He  gazes  on  tombstones  duller  than  those  of  Feltre's 
communion,  but  none  the  less  marking  the  resting- 
places  of  men  released  from  the  strife.  He  reflects 
that,  if  this  church  were  Roman,  it  would  be  possible 
to  enter  and  cleanse  the  stained  soul  in  confession. 
The  path  to  which  the  Romanist  is  pointing  meanders 
across  the  horizon  ;  he  says,  two  sexes  created  at  war 
with  each  other  must  abjure  their  sex  before  they  can  be 
at  peace.  Woodseer,  on  the  other  hand,  is  for  regaining 
— outside  the  Church — the  right  to  be  numbered  among 
the  world's  fighting  men,  "  the  act  penitential-youth 
put  behind  us,  the  steady  course  ahead."  The  ideas 
conflict,  but  Fleetwood's  friendship  for  both  men  is 
sincere,  and  consequently  he  is  waking,  between  the 
two  of  them,  to  the  claims  of  others,  "  youth's  infant 
conscience."  With  the  rest  of  his  intimates,  and  es- 
pecially in  his  relation  to  women,  he  has  been  handi- 
capped by  his  wealth.  Having  been,  as  Henrietta 
exclaims,  "  accustomed  to  buy  men  and  women,"  he 
early  lost  faith  in  their  ingenuousness. 

Since  the  day  of  his  meeting  with  Woodseer  in  the 
Bavarian  highlands,  he  has  travelled  fast  and  far.  His 
whimsical  feeling  for  Carinthia  darkened  to  bitterness 
almost  before  their  engagement,  and  from  the  morning 


THE   AMAZING   MARRIAGE  299 

of  their  marriage  they  never  met  again,  overtly,  till  the 
struggle  between  them  began.  In  this  struggle  he  has 
had  real  cause  for  complaint,  for  Carinthia  has  been 
strangely  unimaginative.  He  begins  to  suspect  that 
she  is  not  aware  of  the  degree  in  which  she  was  thrust 
on  her  lord;  none  the  less,  by  her  unsolicited  champion- 
ship and  pursuance  of  her  husband  she  has  placed  him 
in  situations  so  ridiculous  that  any  man  with  a  keen 
social  sense  must  have  found  them  difficult  to  forget 
and  forgive.  For  the  long  neglect,  and  the  kidnapping, 
and  for  an  offence  deeper  and  darker  than  these, 
Carinthia's  pardon  has  to  be  sought.  And  now  Fleet- 
wood's love  has  developed,  the  reader  is  forced  to  recog- 
nise that  his  feeling  is  more  subtle  and,  in  some  ways, 
too  delicate  for  that  of  his  wife.  In  fact,  given  the  main 
outlines  of  character,  whimsical  subtlety  and  sensitive- 
ness on  one  side,  and  heroic  simplicity  and  literalness 
on  the  other,  the  situation  is  comprehensible  enough. 
But  what  Fleetwood  failed  to  grasp  till  too  late,  and 
what  goes  far  to  justify  Carinthia's  unimaginativeness, 
is  the  heroic  scale  on  which  her  nature  is  built.  Devoid 
of  subtlety  of  perception,  it  is  devoid  also  of  small- 
mindedness  or  shadow  of  turning.  She  has  nothing  in 
common  with  the  familiar  type  of  character  which  dis- 
claims attention  to  other  people's  foibles  while  demand- 
ing excessive  sympathy  for  its  own.  In  her  unques- 
tioning acceptance  of  Fleetwood's  silence  and  inaction 
from  the  night  of  the  Ball  till  the  day  of  their  wedding 
there  is  foolishness  certainly,  but  there  is  also  a  grandeur, 
outlining  and  mirroring  her  own  conception  of  con- 
stancy, that  gives  her  rank  with  the  greatest.  To 
every  woman  worthy  the  name,  a  passionate  love  lends 
some  access  of  single-mindedness  and  courage  ;  to  such 
as  Carinthia  and  Nesta,  in  whose  hearts  these  virtues  are 
native,  there  can  in  love's  presence  be  no  counting  of 


300  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

costs.  "  They  sink  back  upon  no  breast  of  love  "  :  they 
grasp  at  a  flaming  sword,  but — a  sword,  and  no  play- 
thing— its  work  may  be  to  carve  the  way  out  of  a  fool's 
paradise ;  and  if  he  was  a  mock-hero  who  was  the 
bringer  of  it,  there  will  be  no  escape  for  him  from  the 
ordeal  of  the  uplifted  blade. 

Mere  reaction  of  feeling  is  hasty,  but  change  embrac- 
ing the  whole  of  a  character  is  slow.  It  is,  for  Meredith, 
an  integral  part  of  Carinthia's  greatness  that  she  should 
move  to  her  final  position  step  by  step  and  unwillingly. 
Overleaping  of  fences  is  not  Carinthia's  title  to  con- 
sideration any  more  than  it  is  Nesta's  or  Aminta's  ;  the 
qualities  of  all  three  are  stable  and  independent  of 
circumstance.  The  difference  between  a  wise  man  and 
a  fool  seems  to  lie  less  in  the  smaller  number  of  mistakes 
made  by  the  former,  than  in  the  fact  that  he  does  not 
fall  into  the  same  mistakes  twice  over.  Is  it  not  impos- 
sible to  conceive  of  Nataly  or  Countess  Fanny,  Aminta 
or  Carinthia,  as  repeating  their  experiences?  In  every 
case,  indeed,  the  exact  reverse  is  stated  of  them.  Their 
freedom  is  achieved  as  a  means  to  an  end.  And  in  this 
— the  fact  that  their  quest  is  for  righteousness  and  wis- 
dom, not  for  any  renewal  of  sensation,  however  exalted 
— is  the  secret  of  what  Mr.  Le  Gallienne  has  termed 
"  a  certain  coldness  about  these  young  Dianas,"  the 
secret  also  of  their  peculiar  and  permanent  beauty. 


CHAPTER   XXI 
THE   SHORT   STORIES 

HT^HE  House  on  the  Beack,  The  Case  of  General  Ople 
and  Lady  Camper,  and  The  Tale  of  Chloe,  all 
now  included  with  Farina  in  one  volume  under  the 
title  of  Short  Stories,  appeared  in  the  New  Quarterly 
Magazine  for  January,  1877,  July,  1877,  an(^  July. 
1879,  respectively.  That  is,  they  belong  to  the  period 
which  produced  The  Essay  on  Comedy  \  and,  in  subtlety 
of  thought  and  delicacy  of  workmanship,  they  are 
not  far  from  its  level.  The  stories  appear  at  first 
sight  readily  divisible  into  comic  and  tragic,  but  on 
further  acquaintance  they  prove  less  easy  to  classify. 
Relatively  to  the  profoundly  tragic  Tale  of  Chloe, 
the  other  two  stories  are  certainly  comedy;  but  in 
The  House  on  the  Beach,  at  any  rate,  the  loftier 
muse  follows  close  in  her  sister's  wake.  The  inter- 
mingling of  laughter  and  tears  in  this  story  is  only  to 
be  fully  appreciated  in  view  of  the  coarseness  of  instru- 
ment from  which  such  gradation  of  tone  is  obtained  ; 
for  The  House  on  the  Beach  is  a  study  of  lower 
middle-class  persons  in  a  lower  middle-class  setting. 
Tinman,  its  central  character,  is  the  mean-minded  ex- 
tradesman,  but  now  socially  aspiring  Bailiff,  of  the 
Cinque  Port  of  Crikswich.  He  is  almost  without  a 
redeeming  quality,  and,  in  strains  of  the  mock-heroic 
well  suited  to  his  pretensions,  Meredith  plays  with  him 
as  a  cat  plays  with  a  mouse.     He  is  revealed  as  even 

301 


302  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

more  sordid  than  his  surroundings,  though  we  are  told 
in  reference  to  his  house  on  the  beach,  "  Sea  de- 
lighted it  not,  nor  land  either.  Marine  Parade  fronting 
it  to  the  left,  shaded  sickly  eyes  under  a  worn,  green 
verandah  from  a  sun  that  rarely  appeared,  as  the 
traducers  of  spinsters  pretend  those  virgins  are  ever 
keenly  on  their  guard  against  him  that  cometh  not. 
Belle  Vue  Terrace  stared  out  of  lank  glass  panes  with- 
out reserve,  unashamed  of  its  yellow  complexion.'  A 
gaping  public-house,  calling  itself  newly  hotel,  fell 
backward  a  step.  Villas  with  the  titles  of  royalty  and 
bloody  battles  claimed  five  feet  of  garden,  and  swelled 
in  bow  windows  beside  other  villas  which  drew  up 
firmly,  commending  to  the  attention  a  decent  straight- 
ness  and  unintrusive  decorum  in  preference.  .  .  .  Shaven- 
ness,  featurelessness,  emptiness,  clamminess,  scurfiness, 
formed  the  outward  expression  of  a  town  to  which 
people  were  reasonably  glad  to  come  from  London  in 
summer-time,  for  there  was  nothing  in  Crikswich  to 
distract  the  naked  pursuit  of  health."  Tinman,  at  the 
time  of  his  friend  Van  Diemen  Smith's  return  from 
Australia,  is  absorbed  in  a  scheme  for  taking  advantage 
of  his  official  position  as  bailiff  of  Crikswich  to  present 
a  congratulatory  address  to  the  Queen  on  the  occasion 
of  the  marriage  of  one  of  her  daughters.  To  this  end 
he  attitudinises  daily  in  a  court  suit  before  the  glass. 
And  Van  Diemen  Smith,  arriving  at  Crikswich  late  in 
the  evening,  walks  into  a  hired  mirror  which,  on  account 
of  its  unsatisfactory  powers  of  reflection,  is  being  moved 
out  of  Tinman's  house  and  returned  to  its  owner. 

Van  Diemen  is  large-minded  and  warm-hearted  in 
character.  It  is  strange  to  think  that  there  can  ever 
have  been  a  genuine  relationship  between  him  and 
Tinman.  But  he  has  been  long  in  Australia,  and  in 
these  years  his  passionate  attachment  to  the  land  of  his 


THE   SHORT  STORIES  303 

birth  has  wound  itself  inextricably  with  the  thought  of 
the  only  acquaintance  that  remains  to  him  there.  More- 
over, Tinman's  existence  has  enabled  him  partially  to 
explain  to  himself  his  craving  for  England.  Van  Diemen 
arrives.  He  has  wealth  and  a  daughter.  He  has,  more- 
over, a  secret  known  to  Tinman.  Tinman  covets  his 
daughter  and  his  wealth,  and  uses  his  knowledge  of  the 
secret  as  a  means  to  secure  them.  Van  Diemen's  extra- 
ordinary clinging  to  belief  in  Tinman,  in  the  face  of 
these  developments,  is  due,  partly,  to  the  tendency  of 
a  frank  and  generous  nature  to  credit  others  with  its 
own  qualities,  but  even  more  to  the  fact  that  the  "crime" 
of  his  youth  remains  on  his  nerves — he  will  not  look  it 
in  the  face.  Terror  of  it,  and  its  penalties,  is  the  under 
side  of  the  quality  by  means  of  which  he  retains  his 
affection  for  Tinman.  But  this  trait  in  Van  Diemen's 
character — this  heroic  tenacity  of  grip  on  things  as 
they  were  in  the  past — is  harmonious  with  the  life  he 
has  lived.  He  has  been  where  men  are  absorbed  in 
wrestling  with  nature  for  necessities,  and  there  is  little 
or  no  field  for  the  exercise  of  imagination  on  subtleties 
of  civilisation  or  character.  Sentiment,  moreover,  tends 
to  stereotype  in  the  exile's  mind  the  features  of  the 
England  he  last  looked  on.  Most  of  Van  Diemen's 
life  has  been  spent  in  Australia,  and  his  mixture  of 
elementary  emotion  and  unusual  good  sense  is  part  of 
the  present  colonial  equipment.  The  broad  humour 
of  a  situation  which  places  the  giant-like  Van  Diemen 
in  the  hands  of  a  pigmy  is  visible  plainly  enough,  but 
Meredith  would  have  us  realise  that  there  is  material 
for  tragedy  too.  And  this  lies  in  Van  Diemen's  unintel- 
lectualised  power  of  feeling.  Vulnerable  at  one  point 
only,  his  obsession  on  this  point  brings  him  within  sight 
of  a  genuine  crime  ;  under  sway  of  his  nerves,  he  comes 
very  near  to  delivering  his  daughter  over  to  Tinman. 


3o4  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

The  tragedy  is  averted,  and  a  true  lover's  way  made 
plain,  by  a  furious  gale  which  engulfs  the  house  on  the 
beach.  Tinman  feels  his  house  rocking  on  the  night  of 
the  outburst,  and,  terrified  for  his  property  and  stung  by 
non-success  in  his  pursuit  of  Annette,  he  writes  and 
addresses  to  the  military  authorities  his  long-threatened 
charge  against  Van  Diemen.  The  task  is  accomplished, 
but  sleep  is  impossible ;  "  black  night  favoured  the 
tearing  fiends  of  shipwreck."  To  distract  himself  From 
the  terrors  of  the  storm,  he  goes  to  his  wardrobe  and 
draws  out  his  suit.  He  puts  it  on,  and  his  mind  plays 
round  memories  of  the  great  occasion  on  which  he 
wore  it,  till  he  is  sheltered  from  thought  of  the  tempest 
in  imagination  of  the  day  of  his  splendour.  He  wraps 
himself  in  his  dressing-gown,  lies  down,  and  sleeps. 
When  he  wakes  the  next  morning,  waves  crash  through 
his  house,  its  walls  are  falling,  and  he  is  cut  off  from  the 
land.  This  material  embodiment  of  the  spiritual  forces 
which  have  long  battered  against  Tinman's  delusions 
and  falseness  is  eminently  characteristic  of  Meredith's 
method.  His  matter  may  be  whimsical  or  even  fan- 
tastic, but  the  angle  at  which  it  is  set  ensures  certain 
lights  falling  upon  it.  Crikswich  may  occupy  the 
centre  of  the  stage,  but  round  and  about  it  is  the  sea. 

Of  The  Case  of  General  Ople  and  Lady  Camper, 
it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  it  is,  perhaps,  the  flower  of 
Meredith's  humour,  and  that  it  gives  the  main  tenets  of 
its  author's  philosophy  in  miniature.  The  exquisite 
humour  of  the  tale  lies  in  Lady  Camper's  compulsion 
of  General  Ople  from  sins  of  omission  to  those  of  com- 
mission, the  swiftness  with  which  she  drives  him  along 
the  lines  of  his  tendencies  to  their  goal.  And  the 
subtlety  with  which  the  General's  self-stripping  is  con- 
trived may  be  judged  from  the  opening  of  the  second 
chapter,  where  Meredith,  while  apparently  deprecating 


THE   SHORT  STORIES  305 

the  gibbeting  of  his  hero,  recalls  in  the  ebb  of  his  sentence 
almost  as  much  as  he  concedes  in  its  flow.  "  General 
Ople  was  modest,  retiring :  humbly  contented ;  a 
gentlemanly  residence  appeased  his  ambition."  "  He 
was  one  of  us ;  no  worse,  and  not  strikingly  or  peril- 
ously better ;  and  he  could  not  but  feel,  in  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  reflections  upon  an  inexplicable  destiny, 
that  the  punishment  befalling  him,  unmerited  as  it 
was,  looked  like  absence  of  Design  in  the  scheme  of 
things  Above." 

It  is,  however,  in  The  Tale  of  Chloe  that  the  high- 
water  mark  of  these  short  stories  is  reached.  The 
beginning  of  the  tale  is  not  easy  reading,  but  as  a  whole 
it  is  perfected  artistically  in  a  way  very  rare  in  Mere- 
dith's work.  Chloe's  character  is  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  of  Meredith's  creations,  the  subtlety  and  in- 
tensity of  its  conception  being  the  more  wonderful  for 
its  slightness  of  outline.  The  scene  of  the  story  is  an 
eighteenth-century  health-resort,  presided  over  by  a 
certain  Mr.  Beamish,  "our  first,  if  not  only,  philoso- 
phical beau,"  who  by  rigid  laws  and  conventions  raises 
the  manners  of  the  society  under  his  care  to  an  un- 
usual pitch  of  decorum.  Beamish  undertakes,  for  a 
month,  responsibility  for  the  rustic  girl-wife  of  a  middle- 
aged  duke,  whom  her  husband  desires  to  see  something 
of  the  fashionable  world  without  running  the  least  risk 
of  contamination.  Beamish  has  no  fear  of  not  being; 
able  to  meet  the  conditions,  and  he  welcomes  the 
Duchess  Susan,  and  provides  as  her  personal  attendant 
a  lady  of  good  birth,  who  is  known  as  Chloe.  The 
confidence  Mr.  Beamish  reposes  in  Chloe  is  almost  un- 
limited. Years  ago  she  sacrificed  the  whole  of  her 
estate  to  a  faithless  lover,  and  since  his  departure  she 
has  lived  penniless  at  the  Wells.  She  has  "died  for 
love,"  and  where  love  is  concerned  she  is  "  a  ghost,  an 
x 


-io6  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

apparition,  a  taper."  Yet  her  spirit  is  the  flame  of  the 
Wells  ;  she  has  heart  for  all  its  affairs — "  the  wit  and 
sprightliness  of  Chloe  were  so  famous  as  to  be  con- 
sidered medical.  She  was  besieged  for  her  company : 
she  composed  and  sang  impromptu  verses,  she  played 
harp  and  harpsicord  divinely,  and  touched  the  guitar 
and  danced — danced  like  the  silvery  moon  on  the 
waters  of  the  mill-pool."  She  is  a  perpetual  cordial, 
and,  though  the  outline  of  her  story  is  known,  no  one 
dreams  of  pitying  her.  The  strength  of  her  love  in  the 
past  is  revealed  to  us  in  the  uncrippled  rising  of  her 
spirit  above  the  wreck  of  her  hopes.  A  fountain  of 
good  to  her  comrades,  in  the  midst  of  her  last  bitter 
ordeal  she  appears  "  as  the  gayest  of  them  that  draw 
breath  for  the  day  and  have  pulses  for  the  morrow." 
Superior  to  the  frailties  common  around  her,  Chloe  is 
yet  throbbing  with  every  pulse  of  humanity;  she  is  so 
simply  and  warmly  human  that  even  Susan  has  only 
rare  glimpses  of  something  that  overawes.  Romantic 
and  rational,  solitary  and  social,  indomitable  in  purpose, 
Chloe  has  won  to  her  marvellous  insight  through  feeling 
so  sword-edged  and  keen  that  it  has  pierced  every 
obstruction.  The  rarity  of  her  nature  lies  in  its  com- 
bination of  exquisite  and  invigorating  vitality  with 
singular  aloofness  of  spirit — "  she  became  the  comrade 
of  men  without  forfeit  of  her  station  among  sage  sweet 
ladies  .  .  .  she  seemed  her  sex's  deputy,  to  tell  the 
coarser  where  they  should  meet,  as  on  a  bridge  above 
the  torrent  separating  them,  gaily  for  interchange  of  the 
best  of  either,  unfired  and  untempted  by  fire,  yet  with 
all  the  elements  which  make  fire  burn  to  animate  their 
hearts." 

The  Duchess  Susan  is  of  good  heart  and  practical 
common  sense,  but  she  is  rebellious  against  the  rules  of 
the  Wells  and  "  all  for  nature,"  as  promising  most  en- 


THE   SHORT   STORIES  307 

joyment.  She  puts  her  intelligence  to  sleep,  and  relies 
on  Chloe  for  the  alarum.  She  has  no  mind  to  exchange 
her  glowing  material  charms  and  her  blushes  "to  be 
the  light  which  leads  ...  to  don  the  misty  vesture  of 
an  idea  .  .  .  very  powerful  but  abstruse,  unseizable." 
Caseldy,  Chloe's  faithless  lover,  returns  to  the  Wells, 
not,  as  Mr.  Beamish  and  others  suppose,  to  claim  Chloe, 
but  in  pursuit  of  the  Duchess  Susan.  Chloe,  from  the 
first  moment,  sees  how  matters  stand,  but  her  love  for 
Caseldy  is  intense,  and  she  allows  herself  one  month  of 
"  strongly-willed  delusion,"  increasing  her  care  of  her 
charge,  though  never  allowing  Susan  or  any  one  else  to 
be  aware  of  her  solicitude ;  never  failing  in  affectionate 
warmth  to  Susan  or  in  gentleness  to  Caseldy,  and  break- 
ing out  into  scorn  of  Mr.  Camwell,  her  ardent  young 
lover,  when  he  dares  to  put  the  facts  she  knows  into 
words,  and  inform  her  of  arrangements  for  Susan's 
elopement  with  Caseldy. 

Chloe's  knowledge  of  every  plan  and  counter-plan, 
her  resolved  suicide,  her  conquest  of  personal  suffering, 
endow  her  with  an  almost  unearthly  serenity — "  every- 
thing assured  her  that  she  saw  more  clearly  than 
others ;  she  saw  when  it  was  good  to  cease  to  live." 
Her  imagination  enables  her  to  sympathise  with  the 
woman  who  supplants  her  and  the  man  who  deceives. 
"  She  made  her  tragic  humility  speak  thankfully  to  the 
wound  that  slew  her.  '  Had  it  not  been  so,  I  should 
not  have  seen  him,'  she  said.  Her  lover  would  not 
have  come  to  her  but  for  his  pursuit  of  another  woman. 
She  pardoned  him  for  being  attracted  by  that  beautiful 
transplant  of  the  fields  :  pardoned  her  likewise.  ■  He, 
when  I  saw  him  first,  was  as  beautiful  to  me.  For  him 
I  might  have  done  as  much.'"  There  is  no  smallest 
taint  of  rivalry  in  Chloe's  decision  to  die;  she  vows 
herself  to  her  course  to  save  a  younger  woman  from 


3o8  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

ruin.  "  Far  away  in  a  lighted  hall  of  the  West,  her 
family  raised  hands  of  reproach.  They  were  minute 
objects,  keenly  discerned  as  diminished  figures  cut  in 
steel.  Feeling  could  not  be  very  warm  for  them,  they 
were  so  small,  and  a  sea  that  had  drowned  her  ran 
between  ;  and  looking  that  way  she  had  scarce  any 
warmth  of  feeling  save  for  a  white  rhaiadr  leaping 
out  of  broken  cloud  through  blanched  rocks,  where  she 
had  climbed  and  dreamed  when  a  child.  The  dream 
was  then  of  the  coloured  days  to  come ;  now  she  was 
more  infant  in  her  mind,  and  she  watched  the  scattered 
water  broaden,  and  tasted  the  spray,  sat  there  drinking 
the  scene,  untroubled  by  hopes  as  a  lamb,  different 
only  from  an  infant  in  knowing  she  had  thrown  off  life 
to  travel  back  to  her  home  and  be  refreshed.  She 
heard  her  people  talk ;  they  were  unending  babblers 
in  the  water-fall.  Truth  was  with  them,  and  wisdom. 
How,  then,  could  she  pretend  to  any  right  to  live?"  In 
this,  Chloe's  farewell  to  earth,  the  delicate  atmosphere 
of  detachment  which  pervades  the  whole  of  the  story 
is  wrought  to  perfection.  The  artificialities  surround- 
ing the  drama,  the  smallness  of  its  stage,  are  used  with 
consummate  art  to  make  it  more  poignant.  That 
group  of  tiny  figures  waving  impotent  arms  in  the 
West,  is  clear  and  afar,  actual  and  remote,  as  a  scene 
in  some  ancient  metal  reflector. 


\ 


CHAPTER   XXII 
MINOR  CHARACTERISTICS   AND   CONCLUSION 

MEN,  who,  by  the  abundance  of  their  power  and 
by  their  habit  of  concentrating  it  upon  the 
leading  issues  of  life,  have  attained  to  something  of  a 
superhuman  stature,  are  seldom  deficient  in  redeeming 
human  weaknesses,  partialities  not  based  upon  the 
sterner  dictates  of  reason,  but  to  be  viewed  rather  as 
flowers  of  the  illogical  affections,  creatures  of  mere 
casual  association.  Except  to  their  possessors  they  are 
of  little  value  in  themselves ;  for  they  are  accidental ; 
but  they  have  a  derivative  value,  both  as  being  the 
accidents  of  greatness  and  as  providing  lesser  minds 
with  a  certain  assurance  of  community  ;  tending  thus  to 
bring  the  larger  achievement  into  range  with  more 
normal  effort ;  showing  it  not  merely  colossal  but  of 
tried,  determinate  proportion,  a  feat  which  the  common 
man  may  do  something  more  than  gape  at ;  from  which 
— since  flesh  and  blood  like  his  own  have  accomplished 
it — he  may  at  least  learn  method,  if  he  cannot  hope  to 
show  rivalry  in  his  results.  Meredith's  nature  abounds 
in  these  lovable  and  sometimes  illogical  partialities, 
and  his  work  is  the  more  charming  that  he  has  made 
little  effort  to  conceal  them.  A  book  might  easily  be 
written  upon  the  inessentials,  the  by-products,  of  his 
genius  ;  for  his  main  stream  of  purpose  is  perpetually 
in  flood,  perpetually  overflowing  and  ready  to  dance 
away  and  to  seek  delight  and  give  it  along  the  narrower 

309 


3io  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

side-channels  of  life  and  thought.  The  present  chapter 
aims  at  indicating  a  few  of  these  side-channels,  and  may- 
set  the  reader  whom  they  interest  upon  the  track  of 
others. 

Like  the  poet  of  an  earlier  day,  Meredith  has  a  word 
of  high  praise  for  water.  The  cart-horse  at  the  road- 
side trough  appeals  to  an  instinctive  sympathy  in  him 
with  the  whole  human  family  and  with  simple  shareable 
desires  :  "  Well-spring  is  common  ground."  1  But,  like 
the  same  earlier  poet,  he  adds  a  qualifying  particle  to 
his  praise.  "  Water,"  he  says,  "  on  the  one  hand,  is  best." 
There  is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  further  consideration,  to 
consult  which  is  to  find  that  wine  is  better.  Meredith's 
wine  chapters  are  so  famous  that  it  is  enough,  here,  to 
have  named  them.  Alvan  and  Clotilde  rise  to  one  of 
their  highest  peaks  of  rapture  in  adoration  of  the 
national  "  grape-juice,"  and  the  final  compliment  to 
Diana  is,  that,  though  a  woman,  she  can  distinguish  a 
good  from  an  inferior  vintage  and  gives  her  guests  the 
good.  In  a  teetotal  and  a  democratic  age  we  may  best 
secure  sympathy  for  the  intricacies  and  comicalities  of 
Meredith's  wine-worship  by  pointing  to  the  root  of  it  in 
his  deep-seated  aristocracy  of  sentiment. 

To  deal  with  partialities  is,  as  has  been  suggested,  to 
deal  with  the  disconnected  and  illogical ;  and  this  being 
the  nature  of  our  subject,  we  must  rely  upon  the  reader's 
leniency  if  a  want  of  method  appears  in  our  treatment 
of  it.  Whether  it  were  best  to  pass  from  wine  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  elaborate  and  sometimes  surely  rather 
over-stimulated  wits — wits  of  brilliant  ladies  or  cynical 
epicureans,  or  of  the  hundred  other  articles  of  human 
jewellery  that  flash  over  our  author's  pages — or,  turning 
to  more  natural  sources  of  invigoration,  to  speak  of 
Meredith's  peculiar  feeling  for  the  south-west  wind,  is 

1  Melaiiipiis. 


MINOR   CHARACTERISTICS  3" 

a  problem  for  solution  of  which  there  seems  no  principle 

to  be  found. 

Not  long  the  silence  followed  : 
The  voice  that  issues  from  thy  breast, 

O  glorious  South-west, 
Along  the  gloom-horizon  holloa'd  ; 
Warming  the  valleys  with  a  mellow  roar 
Through  flapping  wings  ; 1 

Meredith's  devotion  to  the  south-west  wind  is  due, 
first,  to  the  fact  that  we  have  so  much  of  it,  that  it 
is  the  determinant  feature  of  our  English  climate. 
Redworth,  in  Diana  of  the  Crossways,  says  that  if  you 
consult  the  old  calendars  you  may  find  they  give  south- 
west weather  an  average  of  seven  months  in  the  year. 
This  to  Meredith  would  alone  be  a  sufficient  ground  for 
friendliness.  But  the  manly  strength  of  the  south- 
west, its  womanly  variableness,  the  perennial  freshness 
that  accompanies  it  in  earth  and  sky,  are  the  qualities 
that  most  endear  it  to  him,  and  his  delight  in  them  may 
be  traced  from  the  first  of  his  novels  to  the  last.  When 
the  south-west  is  blowing  Meredith  tells  you  the  time 
by  consulting  the  heavens,  not  his  watch  :  "  They  passed 
out  of  Esslemont  gates  together  at  that  hour  of  the  late 
afternoon  when  south-westerly  breezes,  after  a  summer 
gale,  drive  their  huge  white  flocks  over  blue  fields  fresh 
as  morning,  on  the  march  to  pile  the  crown  of  the 
sphere,  and  end  a  troubled  day  with  grandeur."  It  is 
from  The  Amazing  Marriage ;  and  here,  from  The  Ordeal 
of  Richard  Feverel,  is  his  description  of  that  grandeur 
in  which  the  trouble  ends.  "  The  wind  had  dropped. 
The  clouds  had  rolled  from  the  zenith,  and  ranged  in 
amphitheatre  with  distant  flushed  bodies  over  sea  and 
land  :  Titanic  crimson  head  and  chest  rising  from  the 
wave  faced  Hyperion  falling.  There  hung  Briareus 
with  deep-indented  trunk  and  ravined  brows,  stretching 

1  Ode  to  the  Spirit  of  Earth  in  Autumn. 


3i2  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

all  his  hands  up  to  unattainable  blue  summits.  North- 
west the  range  had  a  rich  white  glow,  as  if  shining  to 
the  moon,  and  westward,  streams  of  amber,  melting  into 
upper  rose,  shot  out  from  the  dipping  disk." 

This  last,  in  the  close  parallel  it  affords  with  one  of 
the  most  noteworthy  passages  in  Meredith's  South- 
Wester,  suggests  another  of  our  author's  character- 
istics. He  has  no  scruple  about  using  the  same  im- 
pression more  than  once.  Indeed,  what  cause  of  scruple 
could  there  be  where  the  impressionable  surface  is  so 
vast  ?  At  the  same  time  the  manner  of  rehearsal,  as 
pre-eminently  in  the  case  just  referred  to,  is  often  close 
enough  to  be  interesting.  That  remarkable  expression 
in  the  Hyj/in  to  Colour,  "  We  came  where  woods 
breathed  sharp,"  is  recollected  from  The  Ordeal  of 
Richard  Feverel,  and  the  equally  remarkable  expression 
which  immediately  succeeds  it  in  the  Hymn  echoes 
a  passage  in  Farina.  "  Bright  with  maiden  splendour 
shone  the  moon,  and  the  old  rocks,  cherished  in  her 
beams,  put  up  their  horns  to  blue  heaven  once  more." 
No  one  well  acquainted  with  the  novels  can  read  the 
poems  without  feeling  that  they  are  describable,  in  one 
aspect,  as  the  novels  themselves  in  distillation.  Who 
doubts  that  Love  in  the  Valley  was  composed  by 
Richard  for  Lucy,  or  that  the  nightingales  singing  in 
that  marvellous  Night  of  Frost  in  May  are  the  same  as 
those  with  which  Emilia  matched  herself?  That  there 
would  be  a  poem  on  walking,  and  a  tribute  therein  to 
the  sweetening  influences  of  that  exercise,  no  prophet 
would  have  been  needed  to  predict ;  though  wonder 
might  well  have  arisen  as  to  why  Meredith  kept  the 
world  so  long  waiting  for  it.1  The  same  prediction 
would  probably  have  included  swimming,  yachting, 
climbing  ;  and  certainly  it  is  strange  that  they  do  not 

1    The  Night  Vl'alk;  published  with  A  Reading  of  Lift,  1901. 


MINOR   CHARACTERISTICS  313 

occupy  more  prominent  places  in  the  poems  than  they 
do.  That  the  Hymn  to  Colour  is  a  hymn  not  of  dawn 
only,  but  dawn  among  the  mountains,  is  felt  in  the 
spirit  of  it,  though  the  mountains  themselves  are  only 
once  directly  spoken  of.  The  Last  Contention  is  enough 
in  itself  to  show  Meredith's  intimacy  with  shipping  and 
the  sea,  and  one  may  have  heard  of  readers  who  took  it 
as  the  description  of  an  incident  at  the  regatta.  As  to 
swimming,  the  climax  of  Lord  Ormont  has  all  the 
poetry  of  it,  and  where  was  the  need  for  versification  ? 
Swimming  is  a  type  of  pure  pleasure  to  Meredith,  the 
pleasure  which  can  combine  the  sanity  so  desirable  in 
our  pleasures  with  that  so  necessary  delirium  ! 

Enter  these  enchanted  woods, 

You  who  dare. 
Nothing  harms  beneath  the  leaves 
More  than  waves  a  swimmer  cleaves.1 

When  the  pleasures,  like  waves  to  a  swimmer, 
Come  heaving  for  rapture  ahead.2 

In  the  novels  there  is  a  tendency  to  overwork  the 
image.  Nothing  could  be  apter  than  Clara  Middleton's 
dive  in  view  of  the  looming  breaker  of  Willoughby's 
embrace.  Our  allusion  naturally  is  not  to  metaphorical 
masterpieces  of  this  calibre,  but  to  the  more  obvious 
parallelisms  for  which  the  simple  word  is  pressed  into 
service  wherever  a  gliding  buoyancy  is  to  be  conveyed. 
That  bold  and  beautiful  expression  near  the  close  of 
Love  in  the  Valley  is  unassailable  in  itself;  the  only 
criticism  it  is  open  to  is  that  its  author  has  given  us  too 
many  associations  that  clash  with  it.  If  the  image 
of  your  lady  is  to  '  swim '  to  you,  while  your  tears  flow, 
it  seems  a  pity  that  the  smell  of  hot  meats  at  your 
banquet  should  be  permitted  to  do  the  same.     But  to 

1   The  Woods  of  Westermain.  2  Ode  to  Youth  in  Memory. 


3H  GEORGE   MEREDITH 

revert;  swimming,  yachting,  climbing,  walking,  are 
certainly  Meredith's  main  hobbies,  and,  to  hazard  a  con- 
jecture, we  should  say  that  they  were  recommended 
to  him  by  the  opportunity  they  offer  for  immediate 
contact  with,  and  strife  against,  the  elements.  They 
enable  a  man  to  take  stock  of  his  strength,  and  to 
gain  the  inspiration  and  the  thews  of  the  fighter  from 
the  instinctive  pleasure  he  feels  in  meeting  an  opposing 
force  and  overcoming  it. 

His  breath  of  instant  thirst 
Is  warning  of  a  creature  matched  with  strife, 
To  meet  it  as  a  Bride l 

The  particularity  of  Meredith's  nature  study  has  been 
noted  elsewhere.  So  keen  an  observer  has,  of  course, 
his  favourite  birds  and  flowers.  Among  the  former, 
lark,  thrush  and  nightingale  need  not  be  more  than 
named  ;  the  tits  come  in  for  a  fair  share  of  attention  ; 
and  among  less  common  species  one  or  two  recur  in 
characteristic  attitudes  :  the  nightjar  is  generally  to  be 
seen  sitting  on  a  pine-branch  with  a  star  over  his  head, 
and  the  great  green  woodpecker  is  snapshotted  as  he 
breaks  from  cover,  uttering  his  melodious  cry.  Among 
flowers,  after  that  of  the  wild  cherry  tree,  the  first  place 
must  be  given  to  the  pale  purple  crocus.  Its  earliest 
appearance  is  in  Farina,  when  Margarita  wears  it,  the 
bell  downward,  in  her  hair;  and  both  in  Diana  of  the 
Crossways  and  The  Amazing  Marriage,  Meredith 
makes  allusion  to  the  beauty  of  its  effect  in  mass. 
Carinthia,  standing  with  Chillon  in  the  marvellous  dawn 
of  that  morning  farewell  to  their  home,  sees  "  straight- 
grown  flocks  of  naked,  purple  crocuses  in  bud  and  blow 
abounding  over  the  meadow  that  rolled  to  the  level  of 
the  house  ;  and   two  of  these  she  gathered."     Proper 

1  Earth  and  Man. 


MINOR   CHARACTERISTICS  315 

appreciation  of  the  flower,  and,  Diana  would  add,  of 
wild  flowers  in  general,  necessitates  this  temperance  in 
the  matter  of  picking  them.  It  is  a  different  crocus,  but 
still  a  crocus,  which,  at  the  end  of  The  Thrush  in 
February,  provides  Meredith  with  one  of  the  most 
perfect  images  in  the  whole  range  of  his  poetry. 

We  turn  from  a  minor  to  what  must  certainly  be 
considered  nearer  to  a  major  characteristic  of  our 
author  in  alluding  to  his  love  of  what  we  may  call  the 
element  of  the  chorus  in  fiction.  It  has  two  sides,  one 
graver,  which  we  shall  allude  to  presently,  one  lighter, 
which  we  may  be  allowed  to  touch  on  here.  The  chorus 
was  a  stately  element  in  the  old  Greek  Tragedy,  and 
the  circumstances  of  its  introduction  were  such  as  to 
allow  it  to  preserve  dignity  while  indulging  in  an  almost 
unlimited  sententiousness.  Now  Meredith,  though  a 
reformer,  will  not  be  a  preacher.  The  reformer,  he  feels, 
to  be  effective,  must  go  to  work  more  warily,  and  take 
the  disinclination  of  his  audience  into  account ;  which, 
as  the  Psalmist  has  it,  hates  to  be  reformed.  If,  then, 
the  flavour  of  your  Fiction  is  incomplete  without  a 
spice  of  aphorisms,  so  that  to  write  a  Novel  excluding 
Philosophy  is  "  really  to  bid  a  pumpkin  caper," — which 
nothing  but  the  most  piquant  sauce  could  do, — it  fol- 
lows, an  acute  and  honourable  minority  consenting,  that 
you  must  introduce  this  exceptionable  yet  necessary 
element  by  sleight  of  hand.  You  will  seldom  make 
improving  remarks  in  propria  persond,  but  clearly  there 
will  be  no  objection  to  representing  some  grey-headed 
senior,  whose  moral  seriousness  impels  him  to  compose 
proverbs,  and  who  is  without  the  modesty  that  might 
prevent  him  publishing  them  ;  and  then,  of  course,  once 
published  they  will  be  common  property,  and  may  be 
quoted  to  occasion  by  the  other  characters  in  the  book  : 
or,  if  no  such  scapegoat  is  forthcoming  for  the  sacrifice, 


316  GEORGE    MEREDITH 

you  may  discover  the  hitherto  neglected  manuscript  of 
an  unknown  author,  as  Carlyle  did  in  his  Sartor ;  and 
Meredith  has  discovered  many.  Altogether  it  seems 
there  is  no  expedient  but  is  worth  a  trial  to  escape  the 
horrid  imputation  of  moralising. 


Throughout  this  book  it  has  been  the  author's  effort 
to  make  clear  in  what  direction  Meredith's  inspiration 
mainly  lies.  Even  when  his  inspiration  fails  him,  his 
writing  is  so  brilliant,  that  brilliance  and  versatility  of 
intellect  have  been  generally  supposed  his  chief  title  to 
fame.  It  argues  no  lack  of  appreciation  of  this  rich 
intellectual  endowment  to  say  that,  when  Meredith's 
achievement  is  estimated  as  a  whole,  it  occupies  a 
secondary  place.  His  inspiration  appears  to  lie  in  his 
poetic  grasp,  the  intensity  of  realisation  with  which  he 
holds  to  the  main  issue  and  keeps  it  living,  in  defiance 
of  the  tangles  of  complexity  he  is  for  ever  weaving 
every  side  of  it,  and  which  might  have  been  expected 
to  prove  fatal  to  the  life  within.  Again  and  again  you 
may  put  your  finger  on  speeches  which  come  neither  from 
character  nor  situation,  but  are  plainly  forced  upon  both 
by  a  critical  reaction  on  the  part  of  their  author ;  and 
yet  the  effect  of  the  character  itself  will  not  be  ap- 
preciably marred.  It  is,  in  fact,  just  because  the  central 
life  is  so  convincingly  represented,  that  it  becomes  pos- 
sible to  detect  these  superficial  inconsistencies.  And 
what  is  true  of  the  characters  is  equally  true  of  the 
composition  in  its  wider  aspects.  In  spite  of  all  its 
twists  and  turns,  its  pausing  by  the  way,  its  return  for 
analysis  and  counter-analysis,  the  underflow  of  passion 
asserts  itself  irresistibly,  and,  once  the  reader  will  con- 
sent to  trust  to  it,  carries  him  triumphantly  along.  And 
it  should  be  remarked   that   it  is   in   connection  with 


CONCLUSION  317 

the  minor  characters  and  the  comparatively  extraneous 
issues  that  mistakes  most  frequently  occur.  Where 
Meredith's  genius  falters — and  it  falters  only  in  situa- 
tions that  put  no  tax  upon  it — his  judgment  is  not 
always  in  readiness  to  give  support.  It  is  where  his 
ground  is  treacherous  that  he  is  most  secure.  Reference 
was  made  in  our  Introduction  to  Meredith's  favourite 
thesis  as  to  a  fiction  that  should  be  revived  by  philoso- 
phy, and  we  have  just  indulged  in  an  allusion  to  this 
thesis  in  one  of  its  lighter  aspects.  We  must  attempt 
to  view  it  more  gravely  before  we  close.  "  Philosophy," 
says  Meredith,  "  is  required  to  make  our  human  nature 
creditable  and  acceptable.  Fiction  implores  you  to  heave 
a  bigger  breast  and  take  her  in  with  this  heavenly  pre- 
servative helpmate,  her  inspiration  and  her  essence." 
We  spoke  earlier  of  Meredith's  partiality  for  choruses 
and  of  one  attribute  of  the  chorus  in  Greek  Tragedy. 
But  what,  after  all,  was  the  main  value  of  the  old  chorus, 
if  not  that  it  provided,  as  well  by  the  dignity  as  by  the 
detachment  of  its  utterances,  a  spiritual  atmosphere,  in 
which  the  significance  of  events  passing  upon  the  stage 
could  be  realised  in  their  relation  to  a  truth  outliving 
them  :  that  it  called  upon  spectators  of  the  tragedy  to 
view  the  actors  and  incidents  presented  to  them,  not 
only  in  their  particular,  but  in  their  universal  aspect, 
and  "heave  a  bigger  breast"?  In  short,  the  chorus 
points  us  to  a  high  post  of  vantage  at  which  the  visions 
of  poet  and  philosopher  coalesce ;  and  it  is  Meredith's 
greatness  in  his  novels  that  he  so  often  attains  to  it. 


INDEX 


Allegory  ( The  Shaving  of  Shagpat), 

17-29 
Amazing  Marriage,  The,  25,  285- 

300,  311,  314 
American  Civil  War,  the,  10 
Appeasement  of  Demeter,  The,  255 
Arabian  Entertainment,   An  {The 

Shaving  of  Shagpat),  17 
Aristophanes,  148 
Athenanm,  The,  12,  13,  29 
At  the  Close,  144 
Austria,  136 
Austro-Italian  War  of  1866,  9 

B 

Ballad  of  Fair  Ladies  in  Revolt,  A, 

i56»  254 
Beauchamp's  Career,  14,  ill,  121- 

137,  HO 
Bismarck,  1 42 
Box  Hill,  9 
Browning,  Robert,  103 
Brownlowe,  Countess  of,  101,  102 
Buch  der  Lieder  (Heine),  104 
Burns,  Robert,  104,  151 
Byron,  Lord,  106 


Cageing  of  Ares,  The,  234 


Campbell,  Thomas,  104 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  14,  15,  III,  132 

Case   of   General    Ople   and  Lady 

Camper,  The,  301,  304,  305 
Castlereagh,  Lady,  101,  102 
Chamberlain,  Joseph,  141 
Chapman  and  Hall,  Messrs.,  9 
Charlton,  Robert,  136 
Chloe  and  Other  Stories,  31 
City  of  Melancholia,    The   (James 

Thomson),  106 
Clarissa  (Richardson),  98,  99 
Cobden,  Life  of  Richard  (Morley), 

136 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  204-7 
Comedy,  Essay  on,  2,  101,  109,  in, 

147.   *49i  155.  l62»  301 
—  the  idea  of,  147-152,  162,  163, 

218-220 
Comic  Spirit,  Ode  to,  219 
Concessions  to  the  Celt,  1 39 
Constable,  Messrs.,  10 
Cornhill  Magazine,  1 16 
Corn  Laws,  Repeal  of,  259 
Courlande,  Duchesse  de,  101 
Critic,  The,  10 
Crotchet   Castle  (T.    L.    Peacock), 

168 
Croydon  Electors,  Letter  to  the,  140, 

141 
Czar  Nicholas  I,  the,  136 


319 


320 


GEORGE    MEREDITH 


D 

Daily  Chronicle,   The,  14,  105 
Day  of  the  Daughter  of  Hades ,  Tht ■  • , 

238,  239 
Dejection:  An  Ode  (S.  T.  Coleridge), 

204 
Democracy,  14,  145,  220,  221,  224 
Diana  of  the  Crossways,  1,15,  107, 

io3,  137,  174.  175.259-269,311, 

314 
Dino,    Duchesse    de    (Madame    de 

Perigord),  101,  102 
Dirge  in  Woods,  34 
Donniges,   Helene  von  (Frau  von 

Racovvitza),  172-175 
Dorking  Women's  Liberal  Associa- 
tion, Letter  to,  14,  139 


Earth  and  a  Wedded  Woman,  255 
Earth  and  Man,  217,314 
Earth's  Secret,  25,  186 
Egoist,   The,  13,   15,  42,   116,   129, 
152-155,  161-171,  175,  272,  285 
Egypt,  138 
Eliot,  George,  1 1,  14,  17 

Emilia   in   England  (Sandra  Bel- 

loni),  75 
Empty  Purse,    The  (A   Sermon  to 

our  Later  Prodigal  Son),  3,  4,  52- 

54.  56-59.  144.  22Q,  233 
Essay  on  Comedy,  2,  ioi,  109,  m, 

147,  1  19.  155,  162,  301 
Essays,  Mrs.  Ahync/Ps,  105 
Evan  Harrington,  15,  4N-52,  55,  56 
Evani,  Elizabeth  E.,  175 
/    aniiner,  'The,  13 


Faith  on  Trial,  A,  167,  187,  193, 
238.  239,  240 


Farina,    n,   29-32,   33,    301,   312, 

314 
Foresight   and  Patience,    14,    137, 

144,  145,  146 
Fortnightly  Revietv,  The,  2,  9,  34, 

88,  101-105,  121,  139,  142,  172, 

259 
PVance  and  the  French  :  General, 

142-144 

Literature,  102,  112,  142 

Manners,  101,  102 

France,  December,  iSjo,  142,  240 

Free  Trade,  141 

Trench  History,  Odes  in  contribution 

to  the  Song  of,  142,  144,  240 
Eraser's  Magazine,  10 


Germany,  boyhood  in,  9 
Germany  and  the  Germans:  culture 
and  idealism,  142 

—  influence  on  Meredith,  m 

—  views  of  English  characteristics, 
119,  120,  142,  249 

Gibbon,  Edward,  106,  148 
Giusti,  105 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  137,  138 
Goethe,  103,  104,  105,  250 
Gryll    Grange    (T.    L.     Peacock), 
168 


II 

Hamlet,  on,  no 

Hard    Weather,     200,     214,     215, 

249 
Harry   Richmond,   42,    no,    1 14- 

120 
Harvard  Monthly,  'The,  1 
Hawarden,  144 

1  leine,  104,  110,  179 
Herbert,  Sidney,  259 


INDEX 


121 


Herrick,  232 

Holly  Hill,  121 

Home  Rule,  137-139 

Hood,  Thomas,  104 

House    on    the    Beach,    The,    301- 

304 

Hungaria,  136 

Hymn  to  Colour,  193,  21 0,  21 1,  245, 
249.  2S6,  312,  313 

I 

i  (Merivale's  Translation),  102 
—  (Meredith's  Translations  of  frag- 
ments), 234 
Imperialism,  on,  145 
International  Marriages,  on,  144 
//;  the  l!\\\:'s,  34 
Ipswich  Jernmal,  The,  9 
Ireland,  on,  1 37-1 39 
Italian  Independence,  S9,  142 

J 
/.  .1/.,  Lines  to,  144 

/.  M.,  To,  144 

Journalism,  on,  144,  145 
Jowett,  B.,  249 

/w:/-:c-L-.'.'  v    '.:•:.  ,  220,  254.  2S4 


Kant,  1S7 

Keats,  10,  233 

Kingsley,  Charles.  10,  14,  232.  233 

Kossuth,  Louis,  136 


Lark Asttmdimg,  The,  2CC-203,  249 
Lasalle,  Ferdinand,  142,  172-175 

Ftrdimmmd    A  Modem  TV  . 

(Elizabeth  E.  Evans),  175 
Y 


Lasa'U,     Meine    Bezichungen    sit 

Ferdinand  [Fxau  von  Racowitza), 

172 
Last  Contention,  The,  254,  313 

.•';■>■,  75k,  17 
Le  Gallienne,  Richard,  34,  39,  61, 

94,  220,  300 
Letter  to  the  Croydon  electors,  140, 

141 
Letter   to   the    Dorking   Women's 

Liberal  Association,   14,  139 
Liberalism,  139,  144,  145,  220 
Lines  to  J.  M.,  144 
Lord  Ormcnt  .:  >:d  bis  Aminta,  273- 

279.  313 
Love  in  the    Va.'.'ey,    10,  236,   237, 

Lytton,  Robert,  103 


M 

Manchester  School,   the,    10,    134, 

Marriage,  on,  139,   140,  144,  270- 

•73 

Maxse,  Admiral,  121 

Mazzini,  S9-91 

McKecbnie,   Rev.  James  (on   The 

Si.:z  :'<:g  of  Sh.:gr~:\   1S-24,   25, 

27,  28 

.;.':'.••.•  undo  Starr,  187,  215. 

235,  236 

.'.'...-    ./us,  212,  213,  310 

Melbourne,  Lord,  259 

Meredith,  George  :  birth,  9  ;  child- 
hood in  Germany,  9  :  .-:... lies 
law,  9 ;  abandons  law  for  litera- 
ture, 9 ;  war  correspondent  in 
Italy,  o  ;  reception  of  early 
writings,    10-15 

Meredith's  Wm  ■'.',  LiVraiy  Edition 
of,  10 


322 


GEORGE    MEREDITH 


Merivale's  Translation  of  The  Iliad, 
102 

Metaphor,  use  of,  4,  5>  8,  107,  242- 

245,  289,  290 
MeynelVs  Essays,  Mrs.,  105 
Milton,  John,  255 
Modern  Love,  5,  10,  14,  60-74,  *49> 

240-243,  245 
Moliere,  163 

Morley,  John,  9,  136,  144 
Morning  Post,  The,  9 
Musset,  Alfred  de,  105 
Myers,  F.  W.,  101 
My  Theme,  3 

N 
Napoleon,  240 

National  Review,  The,  105,  137 
Nature-poet,  Meredith  as,  196-21 1, 

314,  315 

Neuer  Friihling  (Heine),  104 

Nevinson,  H.  W. ,  14 

New  Quarterly  Magazine,  The,  147, 

301 
Nicholas  I,  Czar,  136 
Night  of  Frost   in  May,  A,   200, 

201,  312 
Night  Walk,  The,  312 
Norton,  Caroline,  259 
Nuptials  of  Attila,  The,  255 


Obscurity  of  language  in  Meredith's 

writings,  7,  62,  244,  245 
Ode  to  the  Comic  Spirit,  219 

—  to  the  South- Wester,  200,  209, 
215,  312 

—  to  the  Spirit  of  Earth  in  Autumn, 
io,  245,  311 

—  to    Youth  in  Memory,  225-229, 
313 


Odes  in  contribution  to  the  Song 
of  French  History,  142,  144, 
240 

Omar  Khayyam,  230 

One  of  our  Conquerors,  100,  107, 
143,  270-273,  279-284,  294 

Once  a  Week,  48 

Orchard  and  the  Heath,  The,  2^1- 

254 
Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel,  The,  II, 

12,  14,  33-47,  48,  60,  97,   107, 

116,  149,  163,  311,  312 
Outer  and  Inner,  199 


Pall  Mall  Gazette,  The,  13,  137 

Paris,  city  of,  143 

Pastorals,  11 

Pause  in  the  Strife,  A,  137 

Peace,  on,  134,  135,  144 

Peacock,  Thomas  Love,  9,  10, 
168 

Pease,  Henry,  1 36 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  259 

Perigord,  Madame  de  (Duchesse  de 
Dino),  101,  102 

Peterborough,  Earl  of,  272 

Phaethon,  233,  238 

Phoebus  with  Admetus,  233 

Pitt,  William,  117 

Plato,  210 

Poems  and  Lyrics,  144 

Poems  by  George  Meredith,  10,  60 

Poems  of  1862  {Poems  of  the  Eng- 
lish Roadside),  IO 

Poems,  political,  144-146 

Poems  written  in  Early  Youth, 
10 

Poetry  and  Philosophy  of  George 
Meredith,  The(G.  M.  Trevelyan), 
15,  142 


INDEX 


323 


Political  views,  Meredith's,  9,  10, 
14,  121,  122,  137-146,  219- 
223 

Prometheus      Unbound     (Shelley), 

209 
Protection,  141 


Quakers,  136 


R 

Racowitza,  Frau  von  (Helene  von 

Donniges),  172 
Reade,  Charles,  12 
Heading  of  Life,  A,  137,  144,  312 
Reminiscences  from   1802  to   iSij 

(Countess  of  Brownlowe),   101, 

102 
Repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws,  259 
Republic,    Introduction    to    Plato's 

(Jowett),  249 
Reviewers,  on,  105 
Rhoda  Fleming,  15,  94-100 
Richardson,  Samuel,  97-99 
Richter,  Jean  Paul,  11 1 
Robinson,  Anastasia,  273 
Romanzero  (Heine),  104 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  10,  232 
Rubaiyat,   The  (Omar  Khayyam), 

230 
Ruskin,  John,  29 
Russia,  136,  142 


Sage   Enamoured  and  the   Honest 
Lady,  The,  63,  99,  156-161,  240, 
242-245 
Saint  Paul  (F.  W.  Myers),  101 
Salvation  Army,  on  the,  284 


Sandra  Belloni,  33,  42,  54,  75-88, 
91,  107,  109,  112,  II3,  163,285, 
294 

Saturday  Review,  The,  12,  29 

Schreiner,  O.,  9 

Secularist,  The,  89 

Self-criticism,  Meredith's,  34,  107 

Sermon  to  Our  Later  Prodigal  Son, 
A  {The  Empty  Purse),  52 

Shakespeare,  42,  no,  117,  118 

Shaving  of  Shagpat,   The,   II,    14, 

17-29.  33 
Shelley,  15,  104 
Sheridan,  R.  B.,  259 
Shipwreck     of    Idomeneus,      The, 

234 
Short  Stories,  301-308 
Should  Thy  Love  Die,  10 
Sonnets,  7,  60,  61,  245,  255 
South  African  War,  on  the,  144 
South-Wester,  Ode  to  the,  200,  209, 

215,  312 
South-  West  Wind  in  the  Woodland, 

The,  10 
Spectator,  The,  13,  60 
Spirit  of  Earth   in  Autumn,    Ode 

to  the,  10,  245,  311 
Stead,  W.  T.,  145 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  47 
Story  of  a   South   African    Farm, 

The  (Schreiner),  9 
Sturge,  Joseph,  136 
Style,  Meredith's,  4,   5,  6-8,   107, 

230-258,    289,    290,    312,    313, 

315,  3*6 
Swift,  Dean,  148 
Swinburne,  60 


Tale  of  Chloe,  The,  271,  301,  305- 

308 
Talleyrand,  102 


3^4 


GEORGE    MEREDITH 


Tennyson,  103,  232 

Test  of  Manhood,  The,  248 

Thomson,  James,  13,   14,  47,  105, 

109,  149,  168 
Thrush  in  February,  The,  200,  207, 

216,  249,  315 
Times,  The,  12,  136,  138,  259 
—  Literary  Supplement,  105 
To  J.  M.,  144 
Tragic  Comedians,   The,  107,  10S, 

109,  no,  142,  172-181,  269 
Trevelyan,    G.    M.,    15,    57,    125, 

142,  193,  240 
Turgenev,  42 


U 

Universal  Review,  The,  284 


V 

Valencia,  272 
Venice,  9,  88,  126-129 
Vittoria,  82,  85,  88-93 

W 

Wellington,  Duke  of,  136 
Whimper  of  Sympathy,  34 
Woodland  Peace,  34,  247 
Woods  of   Westermain,    The,   215, 

217,  250,  313 
Wordsworth,  W.,  106,  207,  208 
World's  Advance,  The,  159 


Youth  in  Memory,  Ode  to,  225-229, 
313 


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